15 Oe adjective and its categories

There are primary adjectives, dating back from the very old times and derivative adjectives made by adjective-forming suffixes from nouns. this part of speech agrees with the noun it modifies in number, gender and case. Consequently, the adjectives have the same categories as the nouns do. Besides, they have categories which are purely adjectival.The adjective in Old English had the following categories:number - the singular and the plural;gender - masculine, neuter and feminine;case - 4/5 (nominative, genitive, dative accusative and partly instrumental)Besides, the adjectives had two declensions, strong and weak . The weak form of the adjective is used after a demonstrative pronoun, a personal pronoun or a noun in the genitive case, no matter whether the adjective is before the noun or after it and may be a stable epithet to the noun. When the adjective is not so accompanied, or is preceded by an adjective of quantity or number, it is declined strong. Specifically adjectival categories are the degrees of comparison - the positive, the comparative and the superlative. These are characteristic only for the qualitative adjectives.gs that are almost the same for the adjectives and for the participles).Qualitative adjectives had degrees of comparison (positive, comparative and superlative). The forms of the comparative and the superlative degree are made synthetically, by adding suffixes -ra and -ost/-est.soft - softra - softost (soft) Sometimes suffixation was accompanied by /-mutation of a root vowel: eald - ieldra - ieldest (old)

16 OE Verb. Its categories. The form-building devices were gradation (vowel interchange), the use of suffixes, inflections, and suppletion.The non-finite forms of the verb in Old English were the infinitive and two Participles. Participle I is formed by means of the suffix -ende added to the stem of the infinitive: writan - writende (to write - writing),sprecan - sprecende (to speak – speaking).Participle II expressed actions and states resulting from past action and was passive in meaning with transitive verbs, and rendered only temporal meaning of the past with the intransitive. Participle II was commonly marked by the prefix ʒe-, writan - writen, ʒewriten.The verb in Old English has the following categories: person, number, tense and mood.Number is a way of agreement of the predicate with the subject represented by the opposition of the singular and the plural. As dual number by that time was very seldom used.The category of person is represented by all the three persons, though this opposition is neutralised in many positions. Present Tense Singular has all the forms, whereas in plural the category is not shown.The category of mood was represented by the opposition of three moods - Indicative - Subjunctive - Imperative.The Indicative mood represents the action as a real fact. The Imperative expresses order, or request to a second person. The action expressed by Subjunctive mood is shifted from reality . It is usually implied condition, desire, obligation, doubt, uncertainty.The category of Tense was represented by the opposition past -nonpast or preterit - non-preterit. The current form for the non-preterite is the Present. The cases of use:the actual present, the “now”;in reference to a regular or habitual action;with future time reference; emphatic present to make the narration more vivid; historical present.

17 Strong Verbs are divided into seven classes. 1 ї— ā — i — i

wrïtan - wrāt - writon — writen (to write) ;rïsan - rās - rison - risen (rise). 2 ēo-ēa-u-o bēodan - bēad - budon - boden (to offer); clēofan - clēa f - clufon - clofen (to cleave). The verbs that had s after the root vowel had the change of the consonant : cēosan - cēas - curon - coren (to choose) .Some class II verbs have the vowel ū instead of the usual ēo : lūcan - lēac - lucon - locen (to lock). 3there are several variations of root vowels in this class of verbs.a) if nasal sound + another consonant followed the root vowel the gradation formula was:i - a(o) - u – udrincan - dranc - druncon - druncen (to drink); b) if / + another consonant followed the root vowel, then this formula was i/e - ea - u – o : helpan - healp - hulpon - holpen (to help);c) if r + consonant or h + consonant followed the root vowels then breaking in the first two forms changed the formula intoeo - ea - u – o : steorfan - stearf - sturfon — storfen (to die). 4The verbs of this class have only one consonant after the short root vowel, and it is a sonorant - r or I, in rare cases - m or n .The scheme of gradation is e - æ- ǣ - o: stelan - stæl – stǣlon - stolen (to steal). 5These verbs also have a short root vowel followed by only one consonant other than I, r or n and here the basic vowels are:e - æ - ǣ – e: sprecan - spræc - sprǣcon - sprecen (to speak).When the first sound was ӡ then diphthongization of e is observed and the forms of such verbs are: ӡiefan - ӡea f - ӡeafon -ӡiefen (to give). 6 a-ō-ō-a :faran - fōr - fōron - faren (to go)Here belong such verbs as wadan (walk), bacan ( b ak e), sceacan (shake). 7 ā-ē-ē-ā: hātan-hēt-hēton-hāten; ā-ēo- ēo-ā: cnāwan-cnēow- cnēowon- cnāwen.

18 Weak verbs , their past tense and Participle II were made by adding the-dental suffix -t- or -d- to the root morpheme. They are divided into three classes- depending on the ending of the infinitive, the sonority of the suffix and the sounds preceding the suffix. New verbs derived from nouns, adjectives and partly adverbs were conjugated weak: hors n (horse) —horsian w v 2 (supply with horses) .Borrowed verbs (though not very numerous in Old English) were also weak: Lat. signare — seʒnian (to mark with a sign). Classes : 1 The verbs of this class ended in -an (or -ian after r). Originally they had had a stem-forming suffix -i- that caused the mutation of the root vowel.Regular class I verbs have mutation of their root vowel , and the three basic forms of the verb end in:-a n / -ia n — de/ede/te – ed/-t-d: (nasjan —> ) nerian - nerede - nered (to save). When the suffix was preceded by a voiceless consonant, the suffix -d- changed into in the second participle both -t- and -ed are found: cēpan - cēpte - cēpt, cēped (to keep).If the stem ended in two consonants, the second being d or t, participle II of such verbs, can have variant endings - in -d, -t, or -ded, -ted: sendan - sende - send, sended (to send) .Irregular verbs of the 1st class of the weak verbs had mutated vowel only in the infinitive (salian —> ) sellan - sealde - seald (to give). 2 These verbs originally had the suffix -oia- in the infinitive; the root vowel is the same in all three forms. The absence of mutation in the infinitiveis due to the fact that the -i- (from -oja-) appeared at the time when the process of mutation was over. The suffix gave the vowel -o- in the past tense and in the infinitive. -ian - ode - od : macian - mac ode - macod (to make) . 3 The suffix -ai-, that determined the peculiarities of conjugation of the weak verbs of the third class in Old English is no lohger found. Some verbs of this class have doubled consonants in the Infinitive and the mutated vowels, which are accounted for by the presence of the element in some forms in Old English. -an-de-d: libban-lifde-lifd(to live).

19. Old English Verbs. Preterite-Present Verbs. A few Old English verbs (unfortunately they are important and rather common) combine features of Strong Verbs and Weak Verbs. These verbs take what would normally be a Strong Verb past tense and transfer it to the present. They then build a Weak Verb paradigm upon that Strong Verb present tense. This sounds confusing, but makes sense when you see it applied to an actual verb. The basic idea is that preterite-present verbs are Strong Verbs that have their past tenses and present tenses swapped. The important verbs in this category are: witan = to know agan = to possess dugan = to achieve cunnan = to know durran = to dare To construct a conjugation for a Preterite Present Verb, do the following: Subtract the "an" ending from the infinitive. This gives you the stem of the verb: witan -"an" = wit Use the Strong Verb Paradigm to determine what the Past Singular would be: "wit" would be a Class I Strong Verb, so we know that the Preterite would be "wat" wit ==> wat This now becomes the stem for the paradigm, and what you would have expected to be the present tense (wit, which, remember, is the stem minus the "an" ending of the infinitive) moves to the past tense.

20. Classes of Old English Verbs as Reflected in present-day English Verb Forms. Old English verbs can be daunting, for a typical verb appears in more forms than a typical pronoun, noun or adjective. The Old English weak verbs correspond roughly to the Modern English “regular” verbs. Helpan ‘help’ is a “strong” verb, one that does not add a dental suffix to make its past tense, but rather changes the vowel of its root syllable. The Old English strong verbs correspond to Modern English “irregular” verbs such as sing (past sang, past participle sung). There are just two tenses, past and present. Old English has various strategies for referring to future time: it uses auxiliary verbs (including willan), explicit references to time (e.g. tōmorgen ‘tomorrow’), and the simple present, relying on context to express futurity. Similarly, Old English has no settled way of expressing what Modern English expresses with the perfect and pluperfect—that is, that an action is now complete or was complete at some time in the past. It can use forms of the verb habban ‘to have’ with the past participle, as Modern English does (hæfð onfunden ‘has discovered’, hæfde onfunden ‘had discovered’), it can use the adverb ǣr ‘before’ with the simple past (ǣr onfand ‘had discovered’), or it can use the past tense alone, in which case you must infer the correct translation from the context. Some of the Modern English auxiliary verbs (also called “helping verbs”) are descended from a class of Old English verbs called “preterite-presents.” They are so called because the present tense of these verbs looks like the past tense (what many grammar books call the “preterite”) of the strong verbs. Most of these Modern English preterite-presents come in pairs, one member of which was originally a present tense and the other originally past: can/could, may/might, and shall/should. Modern English makes a distinction between regular and irregular verbs. This distinction goes back to the Old English system of strong and weak verbs: the ones which used the ancient Germanic type of conjugation (the Ablaut), and the ones which just added endings to their past and participle forms. Strong verbs make the clear majority. According to the traditional division, which is taken form Gothic and is accepted by modern linguistics, all strong verbs are distinguished between seven classes, each having its peculiarities in conjugation and in the stem structure. It is easy to define which verb is which class, so you will not swear trying to identify the type of conjugation of this or that verb (unlike the situation with the substantives). Examining verbs of Old English comparing to those of Modern English it is easy to catch the point of transformation. Not only the ending -an in the infinitive has dropped, but the stems were subject to many changes some of which are not hard to find. For example, the long í in the stem gives i with an open syllable in the modern language (wrítan > write, scínan > shine). The same can be said about a, which nowadays is a in open syllables pronounced [æ] (hladan > lade). The initial combination sc turns to sh; the open e was transformed into ea practically everywhere (sprecan > speak, tredan > tread, etc.). Such laws of transformation which you can gather into a small table help to recreate the Old word from a Modern English one in case you do not have a dictionary in hand, and therefore are important for reconstruction of the languages.