20. Old English grammar. Morphological classification of verbs. Irregular verbs. Irregular weak verbs. Irregular strong verbs. Suppletive verbs.

Irregular verbs

Regularity means conformity with some unique principle or pattern. It does not require any exact material marker. That is why it is said that most verbs in Old English were regular I in theor conjugation they followed one of the patterns typical of this or that class of strong or weak verbs. However, there were also a few irregular verbs, conjugated in some specific way.

Irregular weak verbs

The majority of the weak verbs belonging to the 1st and 2^nd classes were regular. The weak verbs of the 3rd class are considered to be irregular, because the class consists of only three verbs, following their own individual patterns of form-building. However, among the Is1 class there were also some irregular verbs. This irregularity was inherent, but it was manifested in pre-historic times and in Old English differently. Here we may speak of such verbs as

tellan — talde — tald (to tell)

sellan — salde — sald (to sell)

The sign of irregularity of the weak verbs in Old English was vowel interchange, a feature not typical of this group of verbs. The cause of it was the original absence of the sterrwforming suffix -i- in Past Singular and Past Participle:

* talian — talde — tald

Under the influence of -i- only the form of the infinitive could change during the process of palatal mutation:

* talian > tellan;

the other two remaining unchanged, and as a result the verb acquired vowel interchange.

Irregular strong verbs

There was a group of strong verbs which in the pre-written period lost some of their forms and preserved the others, changing their lexical and grammatical meaning. Forms historically past changed so as to become present in meaning. These verbs are called preterite-present, for in the written period they build their present tense forms from the original past(preterite) ones. The new past tense forms of these verbs in Old English are built with the help of dental suffixation, like weak verbs. The majority of preterite-present verbs are defective verbs— they do not have all the forms of regular verbs, which lost their connection with the other forms and were dropped.

Suppletive verbs

Supplition, as we know, is one of the oldest means of formbuilding. All Indo-European languages, and English among them, have suppletive verbs — those building different forms from different roots. Each of them is a class in itself.

A similar phenomenon is observed in German: sein war— ich bin, Russian: быть — есть, иду — шел. In fact, the forms of the verb cortresponding to the present-day be are derived from three different roots: wes~, es- and be.

21. Changes in the phonetic system in Middle English. Vowels in the unstressed position. Vowels under stress. Qualitative changes.

All vowels in the unstressed position underwent a qualitative change and became the vowel of the type of [э] or [e] unstressed. This phonetic change had a far-reaching effect upon the system of the grammatical endings of the English words which now due to the process of reduction became homonymous. For example:

—forms of strong verbs

Old English writan — wrat — writon — writen

with the suffixes -an, -on, -en different only in the vowel component became homonymous in Middle English:

writen — wrpt — writen — writen

—forms of nouns

Old English Nominative Plural a-stem fiscas

Genitive Singular fisces

Middle English for both the forms is fisces;

Or Old English Dative Singular fisce

Genitive Plural fisca

Middle English form in both cases is fisce.