Grammatical categories of the Verbals.

There were two non-finite forms in the Old English verb system: the Infinitive and the Participle.

The Infinitive had no verbal categories whatsoever. Being a verbal noun, it had a sort of case system, corresponding to the Nominative and the Dative case of nouns:

Uninflected form inflected form

(Nominative case) (Dative case)

OE helpan OE tō helpenne

NE help

The inflected form was used after the preposition tō, NE to, to denote the direction or purpose of the action as, e.g. in Aelfric’s Preface to his translation of the Genesis: Þat weorc is swiðe plēolic mē … … tō underbezinnenne “that work is very difficult (for) me … … to undertake”; the uninflected form was used without prepositions, e.g. OE Þu meaht sinzan “you can sing” (lit. “thou might sing”)

The Participle, as a verbal adjective, which characterized both by verbal and nominal categories.

Tense/ Voice	Active	Passive
Present	Participle I maciende “making”	-
Past	Participle II āȝān “gone”	Participle II (ȝe) macod “make”

 

Participle I was opposed to Participle II through voice and tense differences: Participle I e.g. maciende runs present and active; Participle II denoted a state resulting from a completed past action and was passive in meaning when built from transitive verbs (ze) macod; Participle II from intransitive verbs (see āzān) had an active meaning.

Like adjectives, Participle I and II could be declined as weak and strong and showed case, number and gender distinctions.

 

Grammatical categories of the finite verb.

The finite forms of the OE verb had the following grammatical categories: one voice (active), two numbers, three persons, two tenses (present and preterite), two complete moods (indicative and subjunctive), besides an imperative which is only used in the present tense.

The simple future was generally expressed by the present tense (as in the oldest periods of the other Germanic languages), but already in OE the present forms of bēon, to be, sculan, shall, willan, will, with the infinitive began to be used to express the future.

In the oldest OE the perfect of transitive verbs was formed by means of the forms of habban, to have, and the past participle, and that of intransitive verbs by means of wesan, to be, and the past participle. At a later period habban came to be used to form the perfect of intransitive verbs also. The only trace of the old passive voice preserved in OE is hātte (? háitada), is or was called, pl. hātton. Otherwise the passive was expressed by the forms of bēōn, wesan, to be, occasionally also by weorÞan, to become, and the past participle.

 

Morphological classification of verbs.

The OE verbs are divided into two great classes: Strong and Weak. The strong verbs form their preterite (originally perfect) and past participle by means of ablant. The weak verbs form their preterite by the addition of a syllable containing a dental (-de, -te = Goth. -da, -ta), and their past participle by means of a dental suffix (-d, -tGoth. -Þ, -t).

In addition to the main difference (vowel gradation and dental suffix) the two groups differed in the number of principal forms: three forms for the weak verbs and four for the strong. The strong verbs had two past tense stems with a different vowel grade in most classes.

A. Strong Verbs.

In the old English language there must have been over three hundred strong verbs.

The strong verbs in OE are usually divided into seven classes, each marked by a peculiar gradation series; in some classes vowel alternations were accompanied by a consonant interchange (second and third classes: 5 [z]-[s]-[r]; 3 [ð]-[θ]-[d]).

The vowel alternations in OE strong verbs were due to vowel gradation, that is, they went back to the Indo-European ablant: e/i -a – zero lies in the foundation of the first five classes of strong verbs. In other words the first five classes of strong verbs differ from each other not by the form of ablant, but by different additional vowels or consonants used.

We should also mention the fact that though three grades of ablant were used for the formation of the basic forms of strong verbs, there were four basic forms of the OE verbs: Infinitive, Past Singular, Past Plural and Participle II. The correspondence between the basic forms of the verb and he grades of ablant is the following: the first grade of ablant corresponds to the first basic form of the verb, the Infinitive; the second grade of ablant correswponds to the second basic form of the verb –Past Singular; the 3^rd grade of ablant corresponds to the third and the fourth forms of the verb -Past Pl. and Part.II.

The schemes of the first 5 classes of strong verbs.