Heill Oskar,

One thing that makes me uncertain in Lesson 3 is
that an example adjective in 1.1 is described as
a "masculine adjective". This may make some think
that adjectives take on their own gender as nouns
do.

I don't *think* that is what you are saying
(unless Norse adjectives are very unusual).

I believe adjectives take the gender of the noun
they are describing. So the example in 1.1 is an
adjective with "masculine declination" (whereby
it could also take other gender declinations as
the case may be), and not a "masculine adjective"
in its own right. As we only have masculine nouns
so far, all adjectives will be masculine for
awhile.

So, when you just drop the noun and refer only to
the adjective as noted in 2.2, you still need to
know what the gender of the "underlying" noun is.
So if you've already noted you are talking about
a woman, and later in the same text just refer to
her as "the beautiful (one)", then you need to
use the feminine declination of the adjective
"beautiful" to be consistent.

In an original text a native speaker familiar
with these forms may use a whole variety of
adjectives without nouns and expect the reader to
be able to tell which adjective applies to which
character by noting the gender used.

Now a question about pronoun/adjective gender in
the case of persons: In the Helgakvi�a, we have
already seen that a feminine pronoun can refer
back to a neuter noun if the person in question
is female:

�� var� hilmi
hugur � v�fi(n).
Fyrr l�st h�n (f) unna
af �llum hug
syni Sigmundar
en h�n s�� haf�i.
...

Then the king's mind
was on the woman (v�f!).
She (h�n!) would love
the son of Sigmundr
with all her mind
before she had seen him.


But now let's say that instead of "she" (and
igoring poetic scanning), one spoke of "the good"
(woman) in the second line - would you expect the
adjective to decline in the nominative definite
case with the female or neuter gender?

�� var� hilmi
hugur � v�fi(n).
Fyrr l�st g��(f/n?) unna
af �llum hug
syni Sigmundar
en h�n s�� haf�i.




=====
Kindest Regards,
- DeepStream
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