Conjugation of beon/wesan and an/eode

Infinitive	wesan/beon	an/eode
Present Indicative singular 1 person 2 person 3 person Plural	eom beo eart bist is biþ sint, sindon beoþ	a æst æþ aþ
Present Subjunctive singular plural	sy, si beo syn, sin beon	a an
Imperative singular plural	wæs beo wæsaþ beoþ	a aþ
Participle I	wesende beonde	ande, anende
Past Indicative singular 1 person 2 person 3 person plural	wæs wære wæs wæron	eode eodest eode eodon
Past Subjunctive singular plural	wære wæren	eode eoden
Participle II		(e)an

Suppletivity. As a means of grammatical expression suppletivity is observed in words, word-forms and morphemes of all Indo-European languages.

1) At the lexical level it helps express sex distinctions: boy – girl, man – woman, cock – hen. Suppletivity in the system of lexico-grammatical classes of words can express different categorial meanings of notionals at the lexical level, as in the pairs of verbs carry – bring, say – tell.

2) At the morphological level:

a) suppletive forms of a verb paradigm can be used in English to express some morphological categories. The most striking in this respect is the verb to be: am, is are – was, were are respectively corresponding forms for tense, number and person;

b) suppletive forms of degrees of comparison in some qualitative adjectives and adverbs: good – better –best, bad – worse – worst and little – less – least.

3. The verbals

The verb system in Old English was represented by two sets of forms: the finite forms of the verb and the non-finite forms of the verb, or verbals (the infinitive and the participle). 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 that historical period were not conjugated like the verb proper, but were declined like nouns or adjectives.

The infinitive could have two case-forms which may conventionally be called the “common” (nominative) case and the “dative” case.

Common case Dative case

wrītan ‘to write’ tō writenne ‘so that I shall write’

cēpan ‘to keep’ tō cepenne ‘so that I shall keep’

drincan ‘to drink’ tō drincenne ‘so that I shall 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, i.e. Ic ā tō drincenne ‘I go to drink’.

Thus, 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 Nom. and the Dat. cases of nouns – beran – the uninflected infinitive ("Nom." case); tō berenne or tō beranne – inflected Infinitive ("Dat." case). Like the Dat. case of nouns the inflected infinitive with the prepo­sition tō could be used to indicate the direction or purpose of an action, e.g. Manie cōmen tō bycenne þā þin 'many (people) came to buy those things'.

The uninflected infinitive was used in verb phrases with verbs or other verbs of incomplete predication, e. g.: hīe woldon hine forbærnan 'they wanted to burn him’.

The participle was a kind of verbal adjective which was characterised 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. The translations of the participles in Table 4.7 explain the meanings of the forms.

Table 4.7