Verbs in the common indo-european and Germanic languages

Common Indo-European had a complicated and multiform verbal system. There were numerous classes of verbs, each having:

– active, middle and passive voices;

– indicative (for statements), imperative (for commands), subjunctive (for unreal statements) and optative (for wishes) moods;

– present, imperfect, perfect and future tense-aspects, with dual number distinct in all these forms.

The IE verbal system, especially aspect, tense and conjugation was rather complicated (Sanskrit, Greek, Latin). The Germanic verbal system, on the contrary, was greatly simplified.

1) The outstanding feature of the Germanic verb is that it had two tenses: a Present and a Past (Preterite), the first of which was used for all present and future time, and the second – for all past time. No Future proper existed in Germanic verbal system.

2) Another important peculiarity of the Germanic verbal system is its development of the two main classes of the verb into the so-called strong and weak verbs according to the way their built their principal forma.

3) The next peculiarity of the semantic verb, closely connected with the previous one, is the regular use of gradation (ablaut) to express tense relation in the strong verbs.

4) And the last, but not least characteristic of the Germanic verbal system is the dental preterit of the weak verbs – the formation of the past tense with a dental suffix -d,-t in the so-called weak verbs.

The OE verb was characterized by many peculiar features. Though the verb had few grammatical categories, its paradigm had very complicated structure: verbs fell into numerous morphological classes and employed a variety of form building means. All the forms of the verb were synthetic, as analytical forms were only beginning to appear. The non-finite forms had little in common with the finite forms but shared many features with the nominal parts of speech.

 

Verbal Categories in OE

Being a typical Germanic language, OE has two principal classes of verbs: strong and weak.

The strong verbs form their preterite (past, originally perfect) by means of ablaut (vowel gradation): e.g. ridan (to ride) - rad (rode).

 

Infinitive	Past Sg.	Past Pl.	Past Participle
helpan	healp	hulpon	holpen

 

The verb helpan (to help) has a different root-vowel in each of its four forms stems. Each form is characterized by a specific ending: -an, -on,-en.

The weak verbs form their preterit by adding a dental suffix, containing a dental -d,-t:

e.g. (to hear):    hieran – hier ed

(to make): macian – mac od e – mac od (weak verb)

The weak verb macian does not change the root vowel. It has the dental suffix -od in the endings.

These two groups (strong and weak) differ in the number of principal forms:

3 forms for the weak verbs

4 forms for the strong verbs.

Besides these two major groups of verbs there existed some minor groups. Their conjugation differed both from the weak and the strong conjugation. These are minor classes of irregular verbs, such as:

a) Preterite-Present Verbs

b) Suppletive Verbs

c) Anomalous Verbs, which are characterized by certain morphological and semantic peculiarities of their own. The OE verb has the following independent forms, expressed synthetically (by means of inflexions, suffixes or sound interchange):

· one voice (active)

· two numbers (sg. and pl.)

· three persons

· two tenses (present and preterite), no future

· three moods (Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative)

· two aspects (perfective and imperfective)

There is no Gerund, nor are there any analytical verbal forms and auxiliary verbs. The simple future was generally expressed by the present tense as in the oldest periods of other Germanic languages. But already in OE the present forms of beon (be), scullan (shall), willan (will) with the infinitive began to be used to express the future (usually with some modal connection).

The meaning of the Perfect in OE could be denoted by free syntactic combinations consisting:

a) of the forms of the verb habban (to have) + the past participle (with transitive and intransitive verbs)

b) of the forms of the verb beon, wesan (to be) with intransitive verbs only.

Strong Verbs

Strong verbs (the term was first used by J. Grimm) are verbs with gradation (ablaut). Ablaut in to be found in all IE languages and by means of it different grammatical forms or different words can be formed.

e.g. Russian: в e зy – в о з – взял

The principal IE gradation is e – o – reduction. But a peculiarity of Germanic languages iс the regular use of gradation to express tense relation in the strong verb.

In Teutonic languages the principal IE gradation acquires the form i/e – a – reduction. In OE this series of gradation is used to build up main forms of strong verbs. There must have been over 300 strong verbs in OE. These are very old verbs. Many of them are commonly used words, denoting simple vital actions, such аs: slepan (to sleep), drincan (to drink), etan (to eat).

They are primary (not derived) verbs and belong to ancient words. But this class was unproductive already in OE and their number decreased (there are about 190 of them in New English, some being archaic.) All newly built or borrowed verbs acquired the conjugation system of weak verbs (-ed).

OE ablaut is a qualitative gradation. But there also was quantitative gradation (in IE too, e.g. an interchange of long and short vowels: Latin: ed o - ed i). It was also reflected in Germanic languages (especially in strong verbs, class VI).

Like Teutonic OE had 7 classes of strong verbs. Each of these classes is characterized by its own ablaut series, with 4 different vowels. Consequently OE strong verbs had 4 principal forms:

1. Infinitive (had the root vowel i/e, e.g. r i dan)

2. Preterite Sg. (1st and 3rd persons) (had the root vowel a e.g. rad).

3. Preterite Pl.(had a reduction of the root vowel, e.g. ridon)

4. Past Participle (had also a reduction, e.g. (ʒe)riden i.e. i - a - i - i).

However, this simple gradation was complicated by sonorants, which usually followed the root vowel in Germanic languages.

Five classes of strong verbs had a qualitative gradation; the 6th class had a quantitative gradation; the 7th class had no regular gradation at all. It included verbs, which had developed from ancient verbs with reduplication. The classes of strong verbs and their ablaut in OE may be illustrated by the following examples:

Class I (i-class).