General Characteristics of the Middle English Verb System

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Aspects

The prefix ʒ e-, which was sometimes used in OE to express completion of an action became y- in ME. Its use grows more and more irregular and then it disappears altogether (in Chaucer’s works: y-falle, y-come), so it is only the context that shows whether the action was completed or not.

Tenses

Perfect Tenses

Perfect forms, which arose in OE, are widely used in ME. In Chaucer’s works there are many sentences with Present and Past Perfect. The Perfect Tenses developed from the following free syntactical constructions: the verbs habban, beon, wesan with a direct object, followed by the Past Participle as an attribute to it.

e.g. He hæþ þa boc ʒewriten. (He has this book written)

He is cumen. (He has come).

In such constructions the agreement of the Past Participle with the direct object or the subject disappeared in ME. The Past Participle was placed directly after the verbs to have + to be and formed together with it a simple predicate.

So, in ME there are 2 auxiliary verbs, used in the Perfect Tenses: haven and ben. Haven was used with transitive verbs and ben – with intransitive ones. In NE to have supplanted the verb to be with intransitive verbs as well.

Some survivals of the OE and ME forms may be seen in NE in such construction as: he was gone, the food was gone etc.

Continuous Tenses

In ME the first examples of the Continuous Aspect appeared, consisting of the verb be(n) and Participle I. But they were very rare. Thus, in Chaucer’s works only 6 examples of such forms have been found. Here is one of them:

Sigynge he was (He was singing)

The origin of these formations hasn’t been quite cleared up. There are two possible sources:

1) OE phrases, consisting of the verb beon and the Participle I in -ende.

2) OE phrases, consisting of the verb beon, the preposition on and the verbal noun in -in.

Future Tenses

In OE there was no future tense. The OE free combinations sculan (shall) with the infinitive of another verb expressed obligation, and a combination of willan expressed volition. In OE some of these constructions had already been weakened in meaning. In ME they developed into the analytical Future Tense.

The original meaning of the verbs sculan and willan comes to the fore in NE sometimes.

e.g. I will come. – I wish to come.

I will do. – I wish to do.

I shall come. – I must come.

I shall go there. – I must go there.

Development of Analytical Tenses

Professor Smirnitsky asserts that there were no analytical tense-forms in OE, but there were a number of compound syntactical constructions (compound predicates) which developed into analytical tenses in ME. Professor Ilyish calls these constructions “analytical formations” and he shows that in some cases they approached very close to analytical tenses (simple predicates).

Non-Finite Forms of the Verb (Present Participle, Gerund)

In OE the verbal noun had the suffixes -ing, -ung. The -ing gradually developed some verbal functions and became the Gerund.

In OE the Present Participle had the suffixes - ande, -ende, -inde. By the end of the ME period -inde changed into -inge, by analogy with the inflexion of the Gerund -in.

It is also possible that this new form of the Present Participle developed partly under the influence of the use of the Gerund with the prepositions in and an reduced to -a. In such phrases as:

He is a huntinge. (He is on hunting).

Moods

The three OE moods were preserved in ME. The Subjunctive Mood preserved in ME many features it had in OE. It was often used in temporal and concessional clauses. In conditional clauses the Present Subjunctive is used to denote a possible action. An unreal condition referring to the present is expressed by the Past Subjunctive.

Voice. Passive Voice

In OE the passive constructions of the type He was ofslæʒen (He was killed) were not simple, but compound predicates, where the Past Participle was a predicate which agreed with the subject.

Sometimes, however, this agreement was lost and highly probable that the whole construction was already felt to be a simple predicate in OE.

The Passive Voice is widely developed in ME. In ME the analytical Passive Voice is completely formed and widely developed.

As the verb weorþan disappeared, the only auxiliary for the passive was the verb ben. The verb ben + Past Participle could express both a state and an action, and only the context could show which of the two was meant in each particular case. In ME the sphere of the Passive Voice grew as compared with OE. The subject of the Passive construction could be a word, which is in a corresponding active construction would have been an indirect object.

NEW ENGLISH VERB SYSTEM

Personal Endings

Important changes occurred in conjugation.

Since the ending -e of the 1st person Sg., of the Pl. Present Indicative and of the Infinitive was lost, these forms now had no ending at all.

Another change affected the 3rd person Sg. Present Indicative. The ending eth was replaced by -a, which in ME had been a characteristic feature of the Northern dialect, in the 15th century the -s - form gradually penetrated, through the medium of Midland dialects, into the literary language. In Shakespeare’s works the -s - form is used alongside with -eth, apparently without any stylistic differentiation.

In the 17th cent, the ending -eth was finally superseded by -a and was only preserved in elevated style. But even in this sphere -th - forms are only used sparingly.

The 2nd person form in –st, connected with the personal pronoun thou, was gradually ousted during the 17th century from the normal literary language. The difference between forms in - st (or in t) and forms without ending when addressing one person is not quite definite. What seems certain, however, is that forms in -(s)t can only be used when there is some degree of intimacy between the speaker and the person addressed.

Thus, the category of number in the 2nd person of verbs is on the point of vanishing.

Strong Verbs

In formation of strong verbs forms an important change also took place in this period.

In OE and ME every strong verb was characterized by four basic forms: Infinitive; 1st and 3rd person Sg., Past Indicative; Plural Past Indicative with 2nd person Sg. and Past Subjunctive; Participle II. In NE these four forms were reduced to three: Infinitive; Past Tense; Participle II.

ME forms

NE forms

Class I

Class II

Class III

Class IV

Class V

Class VI

Class VII