Appendix:Old French adjectives

Old French is a Romance language, and hence inherited a lot of its grammatical structure from Late and Vulgar Latin.

Old French adjectives have three genders, two numbers and two cases. Regular Old French adjectives follow a similar declension pattern to modern French ones.

Usage
Adjectives are used to qualify nouns or pronouns, to give more information about them. They agree in gender, number and case with the noun or pronoun they qualify. They are mainly used in two ways, with a copula (that is,, to be) and without one:


 * Circa 1170,, Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lion
 * En la sale qui estoit plaine
 * In the room that was full

is the verb form estre.


 * Circa 1189, Guy, Châtelain de Couci, Chanson de Croisade
 * Com je vos ai esté amis verais
 * As I've always been a true friend to you

No form of the verb estre

Word order is not as fixed as it is in modern French so adjectives


 * Late 12th century, Marie de France, Lanval
 * ore est Lanval en dreite veie
 * now Lanval is on the right path

In this example, in contrast to the one above, the adjective precedes instead of following the noun. The noun in the example above is.

Similarly, adjectives can come before as well as after the verb estre


 * 11th century, 
 * Clers fut li jurz
 * The day was clear

The adjective precedes, the preterite of  estre (more commonly spelled ).

Regular adjectives
Adjectives have three qualities; gender (masculine, feminine and neuter), number (singular and plural) and case (oblique and nominative), hence twelve different forms. Dictionaries list the oblique masculine singular, this is in line with the way nouns are listed (see Appendix:Old French nouns). The declension of adjectives mimics that of nouns.

The following table shows the original Latin and the Old French descendant forms. The neuter is not listed as it is always invariable.

The final -s is inherited from Latin -us, -ōs and -ās. The final -a and -am of bona and bonam become -e. Thus the regular declension pattern for Old French adjectives is -s, unchanged, unchanged, -s, -e, -e, -es, -es.

Common variations

 * For further information, see Appendix:Old French spellings


 * Adjectives ending in a weak -e (pronounced ) cannot take another -e for the feminine.
 * Masculine → Feminine  (no change)


 * Adjectives endings in -f have feminine forms ending in -ve.


 * Adjectives with oblique singulars ending in -t have nominative singulars ending in -z. These may sometimes be spelled with -tz, -s or -ts
 * → (,  and  are less common but attested)


 * Adjectives with oblique singulars ending in -s, -x and -z cannot take an -s in the nominative singular, so remain unchanged


 * Adjectives ending in -nt tend to have identical masculine and feminine forms. In later Old French feminine forms take an -e.
 * → (no change)
 * →, later


 * Adjective ending in -c generally do not have feminines ending in -ce.
 * →, based its Latin etymon (nominative singular)
 * →, based its Latin etymon
 * → ; is attested but much rarer


 * Adjective ending in -t with a Latin etymon ending in -dus have feminines ending in -de

Comparatives and superlatives
Comparatives and superlatives are form as they are in modern French using and.


 * 13th century, Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose
 * Regarde lequel est plus gent
 * [the people] look at which is the fairest (see )


 * 13th cenutry,, Ci encoumence la vie de Sainte Elyzabel, fille au roi de Hongrie
 * Ne demandoit pas le plus gent Mantel qui fust dedenz sa chambre,
 * She didn't ask for the nicest coat that was in the bedroom

As in modern French, a couple of adjectives have single-word comparatives and superlatives



Parv is an extremely rare derivative of Latin, of which the comparative is , the etymon of menor. Hence, menor may be considered a stand alone comparative/superlative only adjective, rather than as the comparative and superlative of parv.

Other adjectives that me be considered as separate adjectives in Old French include, from Latin , the superlative of. Despite their roots, they are functionally separate. See French for more information.

Collapse of the case system
Moving towards Middle French, the case system collapsed leaving just inflection due to gender and number. As with nouns, the oblique case was retained so that masculine singulars had no -s and masculine plurals had an additional -s. The feminine had identical oblique and nominative forms anyway so the feminine singular continued to have no -s while the plural took one. This system continues in modern French to this day.