The participle

The participle was a kind of verbal adjective which was characterized not only by nominal but also by certain verbal features. Participle I (Pr. Part.) was opposed to Participle II (Past Part.) through voice and tense distinctions: it was active and expressed present or simultaneous processes and qualities, while Part. II expressed states and qualities resulting from past action and was contrasted to Part I as passive to active, if the verb was transitive.

The forms of the two participles were strictly differentiated.

Part. I was formed from the Present tense stem (i.e. the Inf. without the ending –an, -ian) + suffix –ende.

Part II had a stem of its own – in strong verbs it was marked by a certain grade of the root-vowel interchange and by the suffix – en; with weak verbs it ended in –d/t. Part II was marked by prefix 3e-, though it could also occur without it, especially if a verb had other word-building prefixes.

• Bindan (Inf) - bindende (Part I) – 3e-bunden (Part II)

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. Sometimes, however, they remained uninflected.

2. Morphological classes of the verbs in oe (strong, weak, preterit-presents, irregular)

A peculiar feature of the Germanic languages was the division of the verb into two great classes, the weak and the strong, often known in Modern English as regular and irregular verbs.

Strong verbs indicated change of tense by a modification of their root vowel (ablaut). E.g.:

1. drīfan/ drāf/ drifon/ (ge) drifen = drive / drove / driven

In the weak verbs, such as walk, walked,walked, this change is effected by the addition of a “dental suffix”.

Strong verbs and weak verbs. The difference between them lay in the formation of tenses: strong verbs formed their preterite or past tense forms (principally) by means of vowel variation (ablaut), cf. PDE sing, sang, sung, whereas weak verbs formed their preterite by suffixation.

Strong verbs

Strong verbs are verbs that signal change in tense through the change in the root vowel of the word (ablaut). Examples of strong verbs are: “drink, drank, drunk”; “run, ran”; and “think, thought”.

Ablaut is an independent vowel interchange unconnected with any phonetic conditions.

It didn’t reflect any phonetic change but was used to differentiate between words and grammatical forms built form the same root.

It was inherited from ancient IE.

Ctrong Verbs are much less numerous than weak verbs. In Old English there were over 300 of them.

Four forms: the infmitive, the preterite singular (first and third person), the preterite plural, and the past participle.Their major categories are formed by root-vowel alternations (ablaut). Nowadays these verbs, generally speaking, have different vowels in the present tense, the past tense, and the past participle.

They are generally divided into 7 classes or “ablaut series”.

I. drīfan (drive) drāf drifon (ge) drifen

II. cēosan (choose) cēas curon coren

III. helpan (help) healp hulpon holpen

IV. beran (bear) bær boren

V. sprecan (speak) spræc sprecen

VI. faran (fare, go) fōr fōron faren

VII. feallan (fall) fēoll fēollon feallen

Weak verbs

Three forms: present infinitive; past tense; past participle. They form these forms by means of the dental suffixes.

A large and important group of verbs in Old English form their past tense by adding -ede, -ode, or -de to the present stem, and their past participles by adding -ed, -od, or -d.

Preterite-presents verbs

Originally the Present tense forms of these verbs were Past tense forms. Later these forms acquired a present meaning but reserved many formal features of the Past tense.

They have an old strong past form as present, and a new weak past.

They are especially important for later periods, for it is from these verbs that we get the present-day core modal verbs, e.g. can, shall, must, may (will has a different origin, see below).

Anomalous verbs

All these verbs came from an Indo-European group of athematic verbs which were drastically reorganised in Germanic.