Morphological classification of Verbs. Strong Verbs. Weak Verbs.

The majority of OE verbs fell into 2 great divisions: the strong verbs & the weak verbs according to the means they formed their stems.

The Strong verbs formed their stems by means of vowel gradation (vowel interchange of the root vowel, ablaut) & by adding certain suffixes; in some verbs vowel gradation was accompanied by consonant interchanges. The Strong verbs had 4 stems and are usually divided into 7 classes.

There were about 300 strong verbs in OE. They were native words descending from Proto Germanic with parallels in other Old Germanic Languages.

Classes from 1 to 5 use vowel gradation, Classes 6, 7 include reduplicating verbs, which originally built their past forms by means of repeating the root-morpheme; this doubled root gave rise to a specific kind of root-vowel interchange. As seen from the table the participle forms of all strong verbs have the same endings irrespective of class:

I      II      III       IV

An  zero  on     en

Two of these markers – the zero-ending in the second stem & en in Part. II – are found only in strong verbs and should be noted as their specific characteristics. The classes differ in the series of root-vowel used to distinguish the four stems;

1 class – i-class

2 class – u-class

3class a) nasal+ plosive – bindan

      b) l+ plosive helpan (holpen)

      c) c, g or r +consonant feohtan (fight), feaht, fuhton, fuhten

4 class sonorant

5 class- noise consonant cweðan, cwæð, cwædon cweden (say)

6, 7 class-repeated root-morpheme

In addition to vowel gradation some verb with the root ending in – s, Ϸ, f employed an interchange of consonants:

The Weak verbs had 3 stems. The number of weak verbs in OE by far exceeded that of Strong Verbs.

In fact, all the verbs, with the exception of the strong verbs & minor groups were weak. They formed their Past & Participle II by means of the dental suffix – d-or-t. in OE the weak verbs are subdivided into 3 classes differing in the ending of the Infinitive, the sonority of the suffix & the sounds preceding the suffix. The main difference between the classes was as follows:

In class 1 the Infinitive ended in – an, seldom – ian-styrian (to stir), Past Tense had – de, -ede, -te; Some verbs of class 1 had a doubled consonant in the infinitive.

Class 2 had no subdivisions. This was the most numerous & regular of all classes. The verbs of class 3 had an Infinitive – an & no vowel before the dental suffix. It included only 4 verbs with full conjugation & few isolated forms of other verbs:

Libban                   lifde                    lifd                   (love)

Habban                 hæfde                hæfd                (have)

Minor group of verbs.

Several minor groups of verbs can be referred neither to strong nor to weak verbs.

The most important group of these verbs were the so-called "pret­erite-presents" or "past-present" verbs. Originally the Present tense forms of these verbs were Past tense forms. Later these forms acquired a present meaning but preserved many formal features of the Past tense. Most of these verbs had new Past Tense forms built with the help of the dental suffix. Some of them also acquired the forms of the verbals: Participles and Infinitives; most verbs did not have a full paradigm and were in this sense "defective".

The verbs were inflected in the Present like the Past tense of strong verbs: the forms of the 1st and 3rd p. sg were identical and had no end­ing — yet, unlike strong verbs, they had the same root-vowel in all the persons;

the pl had a different grade of ablaut similarly with strong verbs. In the Past the preterite-presents were inflected like weak verbs: the dental suffix plus the endings -e, -est, -e.

The new Infinitives sculan, cunnan were derived from the pl form.

The interchanges of root-vowels in the sg and pl of the Present tense of preterite-present verbs can be traced to the same gradation series as were used in the strong verbs. Before the shift of meaning and time-reference the would-be preterite-presents were strong verbs. The prototype of can may be referred to Class 3 (with the grades [a ~ u] in the two Past tense stems); the proto­type of sculan — to Class 4, maʒan — to Class 5, witan, wāt ‘know’ — to Class 1, etc.

In OE there were twelve preterite-present verbs. Six of them have survived in Mod E: OE āʒ; cunnan, cann; dear(r), sculan, sceal; maʒan, mæʒ; mōt (NE owe, ought; can; dare; shall; may; must). Most of the pret­erite-presents did not indicate actions, but expressed a kind of attitude to an action denoted by another verb, an Infinitive which followed the preterite-present. In other words, they were used like modal verbs, and eventually developed into modern modal verbs. (In OE some of them could also be used as notional verbs, e.g.: pe him āht sceoldon ‘what they owed him’.)

Suppletive Verbs.

Suppletive verbs are what their name implies - they formed their forms from different stems or had peculiarities in formation of their paradigm. Two anomalous verbs beon/wesan and don have other peculiarities of the paradigm.

Two verbs with the same meaning beon and wesan (strong verbs –5th class) – in the course of their development had merged into one verb. In the Present Tense they had their own forms: “wesan” built its present tense form from the root; “beon”- with the help of “be”

These OE verbs had the gr. categories of Mood tense, person, number. There were the following moods in OE – indicate imperative – subjunctive. They had roughly the same meaning as in ME, except that Subjunctive was also used in indirect speech. The category of tense consisted of two categorical forms – Present and Past. The future action was expressed by means of the present tense form and adverbs denoting future.

Other verb categories – aspect, voice – were absent in OE, but there existed some syntactical constructions to express the meaning of these categories.

habban +P. II – expressed the perfection of action

beon/wesan + P. II – perfection of action with verbs of motion.

scullan + P. II – perfect action in the future