Regular verbs.

As class II of the former weak verbs was the most productive and served as the basis for the rules of formation of the past tense and Participle II, the majority of former verbs belonging to this class remain regular: love look, ask, mark, prick, prove etc. Some, however, somewhat changed and are now irregular make - made (formerly maked).

The verbs that are derived from other parts of speech are all regular and form their past tense and Participle II by adding –ed suffix now perceived as the ending.

All borrowed verbs form their past tense in the same way, and so they are regular.

Many traditionally strong verbs show the tendency to change their former

past tense forms to a more productive and more widespread way of formation of the past with the same ending, though they retain their Participle II form in -en.

Such verbs as chew, climb, help, yield, starve, mourn, gnaw, ache, fold, walk etc. barely show their former belonging to the strong conjugation, and their past tense and participles are fully regular:

сhew - chewed, climb - climbed, help - helped, yield - yielded, starve- starved.. In early XVII century, however, we still see variation in use of such verbs

The tendency was so strong that some verbs became regular, though further development of the language brought them back into the group of irregular. Some of these verbs form their past tense forms and participles differently – the past tense by adding -ed, Participle II by means of adding the suffix - en to the stem of the infinitive: melted — melted ( molten), shaved - shaved (shaven), showed - shown ( showed), sowed - sown (sowed), etc.

Irregular verbs include those former strong verbs that preserved the vowel interchange in the root. Here belong both those that form their participle with the help of the suffix -n, and those that lost the suffix altogether:

write - wrote – written, rise - rose – risen, choose - chose — chosen

Many regular weak verbs of the I class where phonetic processes of assimilation of consonants led to the change of the suffix to -t, shortening of the vowels in front of two consonants caused the difference in sounds of the infinitive and the two other forms (the first long vowel was changed in the course of the Great Vowel Shift, the others remain unchanged):

feel - felt - felt

meet — met — met

bend - bent - bent

send - sent — sent

lose - lost - lost

Those verbs of the I class of the weak verbs which were irregular in Old and Middle English remain irregular: tell - told - told sell - sold - sold seek - sought - sought bring — brought — brought.

The verbs that were always irregular and stood apart from all the classification to do and to go did not change and also belong to the irregular:

do - did — done go — went — gone,

The verb to be that being irregular in its basic form be - was - been retained the forms of the 1st person in present singular and number in the past tense.

The group of irregular verbs includes also some verbs that became invariable as a result of phonetic changes. Such weak verbs the root of which ended in – t as cut, shut, set, hurt, etc. formerly had the dental suffix in the past tense and in the participle II. In the course of phonetic development it merged with the root, hence they are invariable now. Additionally, the difference between the long and the short vowels became irrelevant and both long and short vowels in the formerly strong spread became both short - so spread - spread - spread; class VII verb let became invariable already in Middle English, and such words as cast, thurst and cost, having the same sound at the end, have probably formed their forms on the analogy with the above verbs.

Modal Verbs

The changes in preterite-present are significant. Some verbs are lost altogether (dowen, unnen, thurven, munnen). The rest lost the greater part of their paradigms and turned into a group of modal (defective) verbs. Unlike the former preterite-present verbs, these are no longer autonomous and cannot be used without a complement. Now they are always used as modal auxiliaries with the infinitive without the particle to. In Shakespeare's time, however, there were some exceptions - at least some of them still retain the former semantics.

Such is the verb witen (to know) which is still found in Shakespeare's times in the form wot/ wotst/wots, unlike other modals it takes the personal endings. and has the form of the participle.

The rest are used only as modal auxiliaries. The verb can/could still takes the personal ending of the second person, but no ending is observed in the third person singular. Could may be used to mean past indicative or the present Subjunctive

May/might, like can takes the personal ending only in the 2nd person singular; both forms are frequently used with the meaning of subjunctive (or present conditional).

The preterite - present verb owen split into two - a regular verb owe (past tense owed) with the meaning "to possess" or "to be in debt to"; its past tense ought acquired its present-day meaning of duty or moral obligation or probability or natural consequence.

Shall/should are used as modals; shall also as auxiliaries of the future and future-in-the-past tense.