Grammatical categories of verbals

2.2 Grammatical categories of verbals

The verb in Old English has the following categories: person, number, tense and mood. Number is not a specifically verbal category but rather a way of agreement of the predicate with the subject represented by the opposition of the singular and the plural. As dual number by that time was very seldom used, no corresponding form of the verb is found in Old English. The choice of singular or plural form depends on the number of the noun/pronoun subject of the sentence. This opposition is valid for all the verbs in all the other categorial forms.

The category of person is represented by all the three persons, though this opposition is neutralised in many positions. Present Tense Singular has all the forms, whereas in plural the category is not shown. Past tense singular had only one form for the 1st and the 3rd person, and in the Imperative and Subjunctive mood the category of person is absent. For example:

First person – Ic wrīte

Second person – þu writes

Third person – hē wrīteð

There were only two tenses in Old English, present and preterite. Either can modify into the subjunctive mood. The present tense is used for the future, with context determining which tense is meant. Auxiliary verbs such as willan also started to be used to indicate future during the Old English period.

In OE there were two non-finite forms of the verb: The Infinitive and the Participle. The Infinitive had no verbal grammatical categories. Being a verbal noun by origin, it had a sort of reduced case-system: two forms which roughly corresponded to the Nominative and the Dative cases of nouns:

beran – uninflected Infinitive (“Nom.” case)

tō berenne or tō beranne – inflected Infinitive (“Dat.” case)

Like the Dative case of nouns the inflected Infinitive with the preposition tō could be used to indicate the direction or purpose of an action. The uninflected Infinitive was used in verb phrases with modal verbs or other verbs of incomplete predication.

The Participle was a kind of verbal adjective which was characterized not only by nominal but also by certain verbal features. Participle I (Present Participle) was opposed to Participle II (Past Participle) through voice and tense distinctions: it was active and expressed present or simultaneous processes and qualities, while Participle II expressed states and qualities resulting from past action and was contrasted to Participle I as passive to active, if the verb was transitive. Participle II of intransitive verbs had an active meaning; it indicated a past action and was opposed to Participle I only through tense.¹ Participles were employed predicatively and attributively like adjectives and shared their grammatical categories: they were declined as weak and strong and agreed with nouns in number, gender and case.

Those two types of forms – the finite and the non-finite – differed more than they do today from the point of view of their respective grammatical categories, as the verbals at the historical period were not conjugated like the verb proper, but were declined like nouns or adjectives. Thus the infinitive could have two case-forms which may conventionally be called the “Common” case and the “Dative” case. Common case Dative case

wrītan (to write) to writenne (so that I shall write)

cēpan (to keep) to cepenne (so that I shall keep)

drincan (to drink) to drincenne (so that shall I drink)

The so-called Common case form of the Infinitive was widely used in different syntactical functions, the Dative case was used on a limited scale and mainly when the Infinitive functioned as an adverbial modifier of purpose:

Ic зā tō drincenne (I go to drink)

The participle had a well-developed system of forms, the declension of the Participle resembling greatly the declension of adjectives. The one typically “verbal” grammatical category of the participle was the category of tense, for example:

Present tense Past tense

Wrīten de writen

Cēpen de cēpt

Dricen de drunce

As we have already said the system of conjugation mainly embraced the finite forms of the verb as the non-finite forms were not conjugated but declined. The system of conjugation of the Old English verb was built up by four grammatical categories, those of person, number, tense and mood. The verb-predicate agreed with the subject of the sentence in two grammatical categories: number and person. Its specifically verbal categories were mood and tense. Finite forms regularly distinguished between two numbers: sg and pl. The category of Person was made up of three forms: the 1st, the 2nd and the 3rd. The category of Mood was constituted by the Indicative, Imperative and Subjunctive. The category of Tense in OE consisted of two categorical forms, Present and Past. The use of Subj. forms conveyed a very general meaning of unreality or supposition. In addition to its use in conditional sentences and other volitional, conjectural and hypothetical contexts Subj. was common in other types of construction: in clauses of time, clauses of result and in clauses presenting reported speech. The meanings of the tense forms were also very general, as compared with later ages and with present-day English. The forms of the Present tense were used to indicate present and future actions. The Past tense was used in a most general sense to indicate various events in the past. Tense – comprised the Present and Past (in the Indicative as well as in the Subjunctive. The meanings of the Tense forms were very general, as compared with the present-day English. The forms of the Present Tense were used to indicate present and future actions. With verbs of perfective meaning, with adverbs of future time or with modal verbs the Present Tense acquired the meaning of futurity.²

The Past Tense was used to indicate various events in the past (including those which are nowadays expressed by the forms of the Past Continuous, Present Perfect, Past Perfect and other analytical forms).

Mood – was constituted by the Indicative, Imperative and Subjunctive with singular and plural forms in all of theme.

The use of the Subjunctive Mood in OE was in many respects different from its use in later ages. Subjunctive forms conveyed a very general meaning of unreality or supposition in conditional sentences. Besides that Subjunctive was common in other types of constructions: in subordinate clauses of time, result and in clauses presenting reported speech. In addition to Mood and Tense we must mention Aspect and Voice.

Until recently it was believed that in OE the category of aspect was expressed by the regular contrast of verbs with and without the prefix зe-; verbs with the prefix had a perfective meaning while the same verbs without the prefix indicated a non-completed action, e.g. feohtan – зefeohtan ‘fight’ – ‘gain by fighting. In some recent explorations, however, it has been shown that the prefix зe- in OE can hardly be regarded as a marker of aspect, it could change the aspective meaning of the verb by making it perfective, but it could also change its lexical meaning, e.g. beran – зeberan ‘carry’ – ‘bear a child’. It follows that the prefix зe- should rather be regarded as an element of word-building, a derivational prefix of vague general meaning, though its ties with certain shades of aspective meaning are obvious. It is important to note that in OE texts there were also other means of expressing aspective meanings: the Past or Present Participle. The phrases with Participle I were used to describe a prolonged state or action, the phrases with Participle II indicated a state resulting from a previous, completed action. The category of voice in OE is another debatable issue. The passive meaning was frequently indicated with the help of Participle II of transitive verbs used as predicatives with the verbs beōn ‘be’ and weorðan ‘become’.

Additionally, there is a further group of four verbs which are anomalous: "want" (modern "will"), "do", "go" and "be". These four have their own conjugation schemes which differ significantly from all the other classes of verb. This is not especially unusual: "want", "do", "go", and "be" are the most commonly used verbs in the language, and are very important to the meaning of the sentences in which they are used. Idiosyncratic patterns of inflection are much more common with important items of vocabulary than with rarely used ones.

Dōn 'to do' and gān 'to go' are conjugated alike; willan 'to want' is similar outside of the present tense.

The present forms of wesan are almost never used. Therefore, wesan is used as the past, imperative, and present participle versions of sindon, and does not have a separate meaning. The bēon forms are usually used in reference to future actions. Only the present forms of bēon contrast with the present forms of sindon/wesan in that bēon tends to be used to refer to eternal or permanent truths, while sindon/wesan is used more commonly to refer to temporary or subjective facts. This semantic distinction (made only during the present tense) was lost as Old English developed into modern English, so that the modern verb 'to be' is a single verb which takes its present indicative forms from sindon, its past indicative forms from wesan, its present subjunctive forms from bēon, its past subjunctive forms from wesan, and its imperative and participle forms from bēon. In late OE and ME, the form earon/earun, from the Old Norse erun, replaced bēoþ and sind.The most important group of these verbs were the so-called “preterite-presents” or “past-present” verbs. Originally the Present tense forms of these verbs were Past tense forms. Later these forms acquired a present meaning but preserved many formal features of the Past tense. Most of these verbs had new Past Tense forms built with the help of the dental suffix. Some of them also acquired the forms of the verbals: Participles and Infinitives. In OE there were twelve preterite-present verbs. Six of them have survived in Mod E: OE āз; cunnan; cann; dear(r), sculan, sceal; maзan, mæз; mōt (NE owe, ought; can; dare; shall; may; must). Most preterite-presents did not indicate actions, but expressed a kind of attitude to an action denoted by another verb, an Infinitive which followed the preterite-present. In other words, they were used like modal verbs, and eventually developed into modern modal verbs.

Verbs conjugate through a mixture of inflectional suffixes and stem-modifications. Plural verb forms do not distinguish between persons.

Anomalous verbs show many irregularities, and tend to be old words. They are sometimes called "basic" verbs, because they are fundamental components of the language. Some of them are historically a blend of two or more different Germanic verbs. There are only five: bēon, wesan, dōn, gān and willan.

Preterite-present verbs. Some Germanic verbs underwent a shift whereby their strong preterite-tense forms became reinterpreted as their present-tense forms. New "weak" endings were then used to form the new preterite tense. The present tenses of these verbs therefore resemble the preterite tense forms of strong verbs.

Many of the preterite-present verbs are important as modal verbs or auxiliary verbs.