19. Old English grammar. Morphological classification of verbs. Strong verbs. Weak verbs.

Morphological classificationof verbs.

All Old English verbs may be subdivided into a number of groups in accordance with the grammatical means with the help of which they built their principal stems.

There were two principal means for forming verb-stems in Old English: (1) by means of vowel interchange of the root vowel and (2) by means of suffixation.

In accordance with these two methods of the formation of the verb-stems all the verbs in Old English formed two main groups — the strong verbs and the weak verbs. There were other means of the formation of verb-stems in Old English as well, but the number of verbs belonging to those groups was not large.

Strong verbs.

The strong verbs are verbs which use vowel-interchange as the principal means of expressing different grammatical categories. They differ from weak'ones not only in the manner of the building of their forms but also in the number of these principal forms. The strong verbs have four principal forms, the weak ones — three principal forms.

Classes of the strong verbs.

There were seven principal gradation series in Old English and there were seven classes of the strong verbs — from I to VII. As we have already said, the seventh class of the strong verbs stands apart from the rest of the classes, because it was the only class formed by verbs which originally used reduplication of the root-vowel as their principal grammatical means; the sixth class of the strong verbs shows a peculiarity that is also typical only of one class within the system of the strong verbs — original quantitative gradation; the rest-of the classes — from I to VII — are characterised by a certain similarity in their original grammatical means as all of them originally used the same type of qualitative ablaut, i.e. the interchange of a front vowel — back vowel — zero in the form of

i — a - ᴓ .

The root of the verbs of the sixth class consisted only of consonants, and the purely quantitative vowel interchange of prehistoric times developed into a quantitative and qualitative one. The verbs of the seventh class show traces of the original reduplication (addition of an extra syllable including the initial consonant of the infinitive and having the vowels -e- or -eo- in the past singular and plural).

Weak verbs

The Old English weak verbs are relatively younger than the strong verbs. They reflect a later stage in the development of Germanic languages.

They were an open class in Old English, as new verbs that entered the language generally formed their forms on analogy with the weak verbs.

Whereas the strong verbs used vowel-interchange as a means of differentiation among principal verb stems, the weak verbs used for that purpose suffixation, namely, suffixes -t or -d. For example:

cepan — cepte — cept (keep)

The strong verbs, as we remember, were "root-stem" verbs, i.e. they did not have any stem-forming suffix following the root, but they added their grammatical endings to the root directly. The weak verbs, however, had a stem-forming suffix that followed the root and preceded the grammatical ending. By way of an example we may use a Gothic verb where that original stem-forming suffix is better preserved than in English.

Classes of the weak verbs

Class I - the stem-suffix -i

The class includes many verbs formed from other nouns, adjectives or verbs. All of them have a front root vowel — the result of the palatal mutation due to the -i- element of the stemsuffix.

e.g. deman <- dom

In the course of time this palatal stem-suffix was as a rule lost. It was preserved only in some participles in the form of -e-(after sonorous consonants):

deman — demde — demed.

Class II - the stem-suffix -oi

The ṑ-element of the suffix is preserved in the past tense and in the Past Participle.

If the first class of the weak verbs reflected the palatal mutation of the root-vowel due to the i-element of the stemsuffix, the root vowel of the weak verbs belonging to the second class remained unchanged (because of the preceding ṑ).