OE preterit-present verbs and their further development.

The preterite-present verbs had the following characteristics:

• Their Present-Tense forms resembled Past-Tense forms (Germ. “Präteritum” = past tense, that’s why they were called so);

• Some of these verbs did not have a full paradigm and were called “defective”;

• These verbs expressed attitude and were followed by the Infinitive without “to” (NB! Most of these verbs are present-day modal verbs);

• Out of 12 preterite-present verbs only 6 survived in ModE:

āζ (ought), cunnan (can), dear (dare), sculan (shall), maζan (may), mōt (must).

Present Tense form formed like Past Tense of strong verbs); Past T. form formed like Past Tense of weak verbs.

ME The following changes happened to the preterite-present verbs:

• They lost their Verbals (non-finite forms) (e.g. OE cunnen – Part 2 of cunnan);

• They lost the Number and Mood distinctions (e.g. OE cann (Indicative) – cunne (Subjunctive); OE cann (Sg) – cunnon (Pl)).

NE. The paradigm of the preterite-present verbs (that had already become modal verbs) was reduced to one or two forms (e.g. must (just one form), can, could (just two forms), etc.).

24. The rise of analytical forms in verbal system in ME.

In OE there were no analytical forms. They appeared later:

• ME – Future Tense, Perfect, Passive and Subjunctive forms;

In OE there was no Future Tense. Future actions were expressed by Present-Tense forms and modal phrases with sculan (shall), willan (will), maζan (may), cunnan (can), etc.

1. Formation

sculan/willan + Infinitive

Willan had more strong modal meaning (volition) that was later weakened and almost lost.

2. 13th – 14th c. – these forms were very common and sculan (shall) and willan (will) were completely interchangeable.

3. 17th c. – John Wallis introduced the rule “shall – 1st person, will – 2nd and 3rd person”.

4. In ModE there is a tendency to use will + 1st, 2nd and 3rd person without any distinction (earlier will + 1st person had the modal meaning of volition).

and had the following characteristics:

• They consisted of 2 elements:

 a verb of broad semantics and high frequency (an auxiliary);

 a non-finite form (Infinitive, Participle 1, 2).

The rise of analytical forms in verbal system in NE.

· NE – Continuous and Do-forms;

In NE these forms reappeared together with a synonymous form:

be + Participle 1 = be + on/in + Gerund (indicated a process of limited duration)

e.g.: He was on huntinge – He was hunting (literally, He was on hunting).

1. 18^th c. – Continuous forms became well-established.

2. 19^th c. – Continuous forms in the Passive were accepted as a norm (e.g. The house is being built – previously such forms were considered clumsy and non-grammatical).

Do-Forms

1. In NE “do-periphrasis” was used in the Past and Present of the Indicative Mood.

2. 16^th c. – “Do” was used in negative, affirmative and interrogative sentences and was freely interchangeable with the simple forms (without “do”), e.g.:

Heard you all this? = Did you hear all this?

I know not why he cries. = I don’t know why he cries.

He knew it. = He did know it (without any meaning of emphasis).

3. 17^th c. – “do” was left only in negative and interrogative sentences to keep the word-order S + P + O (e.g. I (S) pity (P) him (O). Do you (S) pity (P) him (O)?). In affirmative sentences “do” acquired an emphatic meaning (e.g. Did you really see him? – I did see him, I swear!).

and had the following characteristics:

· They consisted of 2 elements:

- a verb of broad semantics and high frequency (an auxiliary);

- a non-finite form (Infinitive, Participle 1, 2).

 

OE weak verbs and their further development.

W.v. form their Preterit and Participle2 by addition of a dental suffix (d/t) –love, loved. Weak verbs form the majority of OE verbs. There are three major classes of weak verbs in OE. The first class displays i-mutation in the root. The verbs of Class I usually were i-stems, originally contained the element [-i/-j] between the root and the endings. The verbs of Class II were built with the help of the stem-suffix -ō, or -ōj and are known as ō-stems. Class III was made up of a few survivals of the PG. Third and fourth classes of weak verbs, mostly -ǽj-stems.

Each Wv. is characterized by 3 basic forms: infinitive, Preterit and a participle 2.

Development:

1. The division of weak verbs into classes was based on the original stem-building suffix of a verb that was already hard to distinguish even in OE: 1st class: OE (stem-suffix –j)> ME (most verbs – with front root-vowel)> NE (derived from nouns, adjectives); 2nd class: OE (stem-suffix –oja)>ME (most numerous class)>NE (most verbs – with back root-vowel); 3rd class: OE, ME, NE (3 verbs only: habban (to have), libban (to live), secζan (to say)).

2. Weak verbs were not as complex as strong ones and had a greater regularity and simplicity. That’s why they were productive, i.e. all borrowed verbs used weak model of form-building (suffix -t/-d) (e.g. Scand. to skate, Fr. to charm, Lat. to decorate, etc.) and, as it has already been mentioned above, many originally strong verbs turned into weak (e.g. to bake, to laugh, to help, to lie, etc.). The opposite process of turning of weak verbs into strong was very rare and was mainly based on phonetic similarity between some strong and weak verbs, i.e. was a result of mere confusion that later was accepted as a norm due to its persistent and regular character (e.g. to wear was originally weak and became strong because of the mistaken analogy with to swear, to ring (mistaken analogy with to sing), to hide (mistaken analogy with to ride)).

The OE verb (grammatical categories, morphological types).

Classification:

1. Finite

They had the following categories:

• Tense – Present and Past (NB no Future! – future actions were expressed by the Present Tense forms);

• Mood – Indicative, Imperative, Superlative;

• Person – 1st, 2nd, 3rd;

• Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl);

• Conjugation – strong and weak.

 

2. Non-finite:

 Infinitive resembled the Noun and had the category of:

• Case – Nominative (Nom) and Dative (Dat)

e.g. Nom beran (uninflected) – Dat to berenne (inflected, indicated direction or purpose);

 Participles 1, 2 resembled the Verb, the Noun and the Adjective and had the following categories:

• Tense – Present (Participle 1) and Past (Participle 2);

• Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl);

• Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N);

• Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc);

• Voice – Active (Part. 1, 2) and Passive (Part 2).

Preterite-Present Verbs: There were 12 of these verbs and most of them later turned into Modal Verbs.

Anomalous Verbs: They were irregular verbs that combined the features of the weak and strong verbs. There were 4 of them – willan (will), bēon (to be), ζān (to go), dōn (to do).

Borrowings from classical Ls in ME.

After the Norman Conquest the main spheres of the Latin L remained: church; law; academic activities.

The surge of interest in the classics during the Age of the Renaissance led to a new wave of borrowings from Latin and Greek (through Latin mainly).

Latin: abstract concepts (anticipate, exact, exaggerate, explain, fact, dislocate, accommodation, etc.); affixes de- (demolish, destroy, etc.),

ex- (extract,, explore, explain, etc.), re- (reread, retell, retry, etc.), -ate (locate, excavate, etc.), -ent (apparent, present, turbulent, etc.), -ct (correct, erect, etc.)

Greek: theatre (drama, episode, scene, theatre, etc.); literature (anapest, climax, epilogue, rhythm, etc.); rhetoric (dialogue, metaphor, etc.); roots for creation of new words; affixes -ism (humanism, mechanism, aphorism, etc.), -ist (protagonist, terrorist, cyclist, etc.),

anti- (antibody, antidote, antibiotic, etc.), di- (digest, diverse, etc.), neo- (neo-realism, neo-conservatism, etc.)

Greco-Latin Hybrids (words one part of which is Greek and the other one – Latin): e.g. tele-graph, socio-logy, tele-vision, etc.

Borrowings in NE.

In addition to the three main sources — Greek, Latin and French, English speakers of the NE period borrowed freely from many other Ls. It has been estimated that even in the 17th c. the English vocabulary contained words derived from no less than fifty foreign tongues. The main contributors to the vocabulary were Italian, Dutch, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Russian. A number of words were adopted from Ls of other countries and continents, which came into contact with English: Persian, Chinese, Hungarian, Turkish, Malayan, Polynesian, the native Ls of India and America.

Borrowings from Germanic Ls are of special interest as English is a Germanic L too. The influence of Scandinavian in Early ME has certainly remained unsurpassed and the unique conditions of close L contacts were never repeated. By the 15th— 16th c. the Germanic Ls had driven far apart;

Dutch made abundant contribution to English, particularly in the 15th and 16th c, when commercial relations between England and the Netherlands were at their peak. They specialised in wool weaving and brewing, which is reflected in the Dutch loan-words: pack, scour, spool, stripe (terms of weaving); hops, tub, scum. Extensive borrowing is found in nautical terminology: bowline, buoy, cruise, deck, dock, freight, keel, skipper. The flourishing of art in the Netherlands accounts for some Dutch loan-words relating to art: easel, landscape, sketch.

The earliest Russian loan-words entered the English L as far back as the I6th c, when the English trade company (the Moskovy Company) established the first trade relations with Russia. English borrowings adopted from the 16th till the 19th c. indicate articles of trade and specific features of life in Russia, observed by the English:, beluga, intelligentsia, muzhik, rouble, samovar, troika, tsar, vodka.

The loan-words adopted after 1917 reflect the new social relations and political institutions in the USSR: bolshevik, Komsomol, Soviet. Some of the new words are translation-loans: collective farm, Five-Year-Plan, wall newspaper.