Abstract In addition to inflecting adjectives for case, number, and gender, the early Germanic languages inflect adjectives as either strong or weak. Scholarly consensus is lacking regarding what triggers this fourth inflectional category, i.e. why an adjective surfaces as either strong or weak. While the traditional school of thought held that weak adjectives surface with definite determiners, some recent scholarship has argued that a semantic force such as definiteness or classification is responsible. To evaluate the two positions, I compared attributive adjectives in the Old High German translation of Tatian’s Diatessaron with the corresponding passages in Gothic and Old English. The conclusion supports the traditional school of thought that determiners trigger weak adjectives and refutes the idea that semantics is primarily responsible for whether an adjective surfaces as strong or weak.

中文翻译：

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元塔田

摘要 除了对格、数和性等形容词进行变形外，早期的日耳曼语言还将形容词变形为强或弱。关于触发第四个屈折类别的原因，即为什么形容词表面为强或弱，学术界缺乏共识。虽然传统学派认为弱形容词表面有明确的限定词，但最近的一些学者认为，语义力量如确定性或分类是有责任的。为了评估这两种立场，我将 Tatian 的 Diatessaron 的古高地德语翻译中的定语形容词与哥特式和古英语中的相应段落进行了比较。