2) Morphological classification of oe Verbs:

The majority of OE verbs fell into 2 great divisions: strong and weak. Also there were verbs which fell into minor groups: preterite-present (combined the features of both strong and weak verbs), and irregular (anomalous). The main difference between strong and weak verbs was the way of forming the Past and Participle II forms (strong imployed Ablaut, weak – suffix –d/t).

a) OE strong verbs (about 3 hundred) distinguished 4 main stems (Infinitive, Past Singular, Past Plural, Participle II), and were divided into 7 classes. Classes 1-6 used Ablaut to form Past and Part.II. Class 7 included reduplicated verbs (by repeating root-morpheme), and some other stem-vowels. In some verbs consonant interchange is found (according to Verner’s law). The rows of ablaut of OE verbs are the following:

I class: ī – ā – i – i (wrītan – wrāt – writon - writen)

II class: ēo – ēa – u – o (cēosan – cēas – curon – coren)

III class: i – a/o – u – u /before nasal cons./ (drincan – dranc – druncon – drunken)

/before “l+cons.” / e – ea – u – o (helpan – healp – hulpon – holpen)

/before “r+cons.”, “h+cons”/ eo – ea – u – o (steorfan – stearf – sturfon – storfen)

IV class: /before “l, r”/ e – æ – æ – o (stelan – stæl – stælon – stolen)

V class: e – æ – æ – e (tredan – træd – trædon – treden)

VI class: a – ō – ō – a (faran – fōr – fōron – faren)

VII class: (hatan – het – heton – haten)

As you see, all strong verbs have the same form-endings: -an for Infinitive, no ending in the Past sing., -on for the Past pl., -en for Part.II. Zero ending for Past sing. and -en for Part.II are specific only of strong verbs.

b) There were 3 classes of weak verbs in OE corresponding to 3 classes of such in Gothic. The 4^th Gothic class is not found in other Germanic languages. The class of weak verbs was more numerous than that of strong verbs. All newly appeared and borrowed verbs became weak. This group of verbs formed their Past and Part.II by means of the dental suffix -d/t-. The 3 classes of weak verbs differed in the ending of the infinitive ( -an – 1 Class, -ian – 2 Class, -an – 3 Class) and the suffix (-i/j- – 1 Class, -ō/ōj- – 2 Class, PG -ai- – 3 Class). The 3^rd Class is the mixture of PG 3^rd and 4^th Classes). The first class fell into 2 groups: regular and irregular.

I class:

Regular weak verbs – (Inf.) deman – (Past) demde – (Part.II) demed (-d becomes -t after a voiceless cons.)

Irregular weak verbs – (Inf) sellan – (Past) sealed – (Part.II) seald

II class:

(Inf) macian – (Past) macode – (Part.II) macod

III class:

(Inf) habban – (Past) hæfde – (Part.II) hæfd

c) Preterite-present verbs belonged to so-called “minor” group. They have so strange a name, for originally the Pres. tense forms of these verbs were Past tense forms of strong verbs, but their Past tense forms derived from the Past tense forms of the weak verbs. In OE there were 12 such verbs. Six of them survived in ModE. They were united by common lexical meaning: the attitude of the speaker towards the reality, in ModE they are modal verbs (āg “ought”, cunnan “can”, sculan “shall”, magan “may”, mōt “must”). Infinitive and Participle II, if found, were formed from the Plural-Present-stem. According to ablaut, 5 main forms, like in Gothic, were distinguished:

(Pres.Sg.) can – (Pres.Pl.) cunno – (Past Sg.) cuðe – (Part.II) cunnen – (Inf) cunnan

In the paradigm of conjunction OE preterite-present verbs had no inflexion in the 3^rd person Singular. It explains the fact why Modern modal verbs don’t have ending –s in the 3^rd person Singular..

d) There were a few OE verbs with irregular forms, which derived from different roots, i.e. they are suppletive (e.g., OE tō gān “to go”, tō dōn “to do”, tō willan “will”, and tō bēon “to be”). The last one is ancient and goes back to Indo-European domain (Compare; Ukr.: є – бути). In OE the verb tō bēon had 2 forms of the Infinitive used in parallel – bēon/wesan. That is why there is a twofold system of Present Tense and 2 forms of Participle I. There was no Participle II of this verb in OE.

Present

Singular Plural Infinitive

1^st pers. – eom (beo) wesan (beon)

2^nd pers. – eart (bist) sind (beoþ, sint) Participle II

3^rd pers. – is (biþ) ––––––

Past Participle I

Singular Plural (2^nd pers.) wesende (beonde)

1^st pers. – wæs

2^nd pers – wære wæron

3^rd pers - wæs