Morphological classes of the verbs in OE

Morphologically the OE verb fell into four groups: strong verbs, weak verbs, preterite-present verbs and suppletive verbs. The first two groups were rather numerous; the third and the forth groups included only a few verbs.

A peculiar feature of the Germanic languages was the division of the verb into two great classes, the weak and the strong, often known in Modern English as regular and irregular verbs.

Strong Verbs built their principal forms by means of vowel gradation. The OE strong verb had four principal forms: the infinitive, the past singular, the past plural and the past participle. Each of the principal forms was characterized by a certain vowel in the root and by a certain ending.

Strong verbs indicated change of tense by a modification of their root vowel (ablaut). E.g.:

drīfan/ drāf/ drifon/ (ge) drifen = drive / drove / driven

In the weak verbs, such as walk, walked,walked, this change is effected by the addition of a “ dental suffix ”.

Strong verbs and weak verbs. The difference between them lay in the formation of tenses: strong verbs formed their preterite or past tense forms (principally) by means of vowel variation (ablaut), cf. PDE sing, sang, sung, whereas weak verbs formed their preterite by suffixation.

Strong verbs

Strong verbs are verbs that signal change in tense through the change in the root vowel of the word (ablaut). Examples of strong verbs are: “drink, drank, drunk”; “run, ran”; and “think, thought”.

Ablaut is an independent vowel interchange unconnected with any phonetic conditions.

It didn’t reflect any phonetic change but was used to differentiate between words and grammatical forms built form the same root.

It was inherited from ancient IE.

Ctrong Verbs are much less numerous than weak verbs. In Old English there were over 300 of them.

Four forms: the infmitive, the preterite singular (first and third person), the preterite plural, and the past participle.Their major categories are formed by root-vowel alternations (ablaut). Nowadays these verbs, generally speaking, have different vowels in the present tense, the past tense, and the past participle.

 

In OE there were seven classes of strong verbs.

 

 

Class, type of gradation	Infinitive	Past Singular	Past Plural	Participle II
I(ī,ā,i,i)	wrītan (write)	wrāt	writon	writen
II(ēo,ēa,u,o)	scēotan (shoot)	scēat	scuton	scoten
III(e,ea,u,o)	helpan (help)	healp	hulpon	holpen
IV(e,æ, āē,o)	stelan (steal)	stæl	stāēlon	stolen
V(e, æ, āē,e)	cweþan (say)	cwæþ	cwāēdon	cweden
VI(a,ō,ō,a)	faran (go)	fōr	fōron	faren
VII	hātan (call)	hēht,hēt	hēton	hāten

 

As seen from the above the difference between these classes was determined by the type of vowel gradation.

Weak verbs

Weak Verbs built their principal forms with the help of dental suffix -d/-t. Stems which ended in a voiced consonant or a vowel took -d; -t was added to the stem with a voiceless ending.

Three forms: present infinitive; past tense; past participle. They form these forms by means of the dental suffixes.

A large and important group of verbs in Old English form their past tense by adding – ede, - ode, or - de to the present stem, and their past participles by adding - ed, - od, or - d.

 

Class	Infinitive	Past	Part. II
I	temman (tame)	temmede	temmed
	cepan (keep)	cepte	ceped
II	lufian (love)	lufode	lufod
III	libban (live)	lifde	lifd

 

You may see from the above that the OE weak verbs can be divided into three classes.

Class I had -an in the infinitive, -de, or -te in the past form, -ed, in the participle. Class II (the most numerous one) took -ian for the infinitive, -ode and -od for its past and participle II. Class III included very few verbs. Morphologically it resembled the first class, but unlike it the dental suffix of the participle was added to the root without any vowel.

A few weak verbs formed a group of irregular verbs. Originally they belonged to class I. Due to their morphological and phonetic peculiarities they developed vowel interchanges in their principal forms.

 

 

Infinitive	Past	Part. II
bringan	brohte	broht
bycgean	bohte	boht
sellan	sealde	seald
tellan	talde	teald

 

Preterite-presents verbs

A peculiar group of OE verbs was constituted by the so called preterite-present verbs. Their present form resembled the past of the strong verbs; their past was built after the pattern of the weak verbs.

Originally the Present tense forms of these verbs were Past tense forms. Later these forms acquired a present meaning but reserved many formal features of the Past tense.

They have an old strong past form as present, and a new weak past.

They are especially important for later periods, for it is from these verbs that we get the present-day core modal verbs, e.g. can, shall, must, may (willhas a different origin, see below).

 

Infinitive	Present	Past
	Singular	Plural
āgan (have)	āg	āgon	āhte
durran (dare)	dear	durron	dorste
cunnan (can)	cann	cunnon	cuþe
sculan (shall)	sceal	sculon	sceolde
magan (may)	mæg	magon	meahte
	mōt (must)	mōton	mōste

 

All in all there were twelve preterite-present verbs in OE. The chart above gives the forms of those which survived through the history of English and are found in the language of today.

One more morphological group of verbs in OE was constituted by suppletive verbs. To build their forms these verbs used several roots. This group of OE verbs was the smallest. There were only two verbs of this kind: bēon/wesan (be) and gān (go).

The verb bēon/wesan used several roots found in its different forms. In many positions (including the infinitive) the verb had two and sometimes even three parallel forms.

 

Indicative
	Present	Past
Singular		eom, beo	wāēs
		eart, bist	wāēre
		Is, biþ	wāēs
Plural	Sint, sindon, beoþ	wāēron
Subjunctive
Singular	sīe, beo	wāēre
Plural	sīen, beon	wæren
Participle I	Participle II
wesende, bēonde	-

 

The verb gān used two roots to build its forms. Its paradigm was the following.

 

Indicative
	Present	Past
Singular		gā	ēode
		gāēst	ēodest
		gāēþ	ēode
Plural	gāþ	ēodon
Subjunctive
Singular	gā	ēode
Plural	gān	ēodon
Participle I	Participle II
gāngende	(ge) gān

 

Anomalous verbs

All these verbs came from an Indo-European group of athematic verbs which were drastically reorganised in Germanic.

4 verbs: don ' do', gan ' go', willan ' will' and beon 'be'.

 

Syntax

Old English, like its contemporary European languages, was a highly inflected language. Meaning was determined by case endings: that is, the relationship among words in a sentence was determined not by the order of the words in the sentence, but by the special endings of the words that determined which nouns were the subject, direct object, or indirect object; whether the nouns and verbs were singular or plural; whether the nouns were masculine, feminine, or neuter; and whether certain relationships of agency or action operated among nouns and verbs (we now use prepositions for this).