Middle English and Early New English Verb

Apart from some leveling of inflections and the weakening of endings in accordance with the general tendency, the principal changes in the verb during the Middle English period were the serious losses suffered by the strong conjugation. This conjugation, although including some of the most important verbs in the language, was relatively small as compared with the large and steadily growing body of weak verbs. While an occasional verb developed a strong past tense or past participle by analogy with similar strong verbs, new verbs formed from nouns and adjectives or borrowed from other languages were regularly conjugated as weak. Thus the minority position of the strong conjugation was becoming constantly more appreciable. After the Norman Conquest the loss of native words further depleted the ranks of the strong verbs. Those that survived were exposed to the influence of the majority, and many have changed over in the course of time to the weak inflection.

Nearly a third of the strong verbs in Old English seem to have died out early in the Middle English period. In any case about ninety of them have left no traces in written records after 1150. Some of them may have been current for a time in the spoken language, but except where an occasional verb survives in a modern dialect they are not recorded. Some were rare in Old English and others were in competition with weak verbs of similar derivation and meaning which superseded them. In addition to verbs that are not found at all after the Old English period there are about a dozen more that appear only in Layamon (c. 1200) or in certain 12th -century texts based directly on the homilies of Ælfric and other Old English works. In other words, more than a hundred of the Old English strong verbs were lost at the beginning of the Middle English period.

But this was not all. The loss has continued in subsequent periods. Some thirty more became obsolete in the course of Middle English, and an equal number, which were still in use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, finally died out except in the dialects, often after they had passed over to the weak conjugation or had developed weak forms alongside the strong. Today more than half of the Old English strong verbs have disappeared completely from the standard language.

The principle of analogy – the tendency of language to follow certain patterns and adapt a less common form to a more familiar one –is well exemplified in the further history of the strong verbs. The weak conjugation offered a fairly consistent pattern for the past tense and the past participle, whereas there was much variety in the different classes of the strong verb. We say sing—sang—sung, but drive—drove—driven, fall—fell—fallen, etc. At a time when English was the language chiefly of the lower classes and largely removed from the restraining influences of education and a literary standard, it was natural that many speakers should apply the pattern of weak verbs to some which were historically strong. The tendency was not unknown even in Old English. Thus rædan ‘to advise’ and sceddan ‘to injure’ had already become weak in Old English, while other verbs show occasional weak forms. In the 13th century the trend becomes clear in change. By the 14th century the movement was at its height. No less than thirty-two verbs in addition to those already mentioned now show weak forms. After this there are fewer changes. The impulse seems to have been checked, possibly by the steady rise of English in the social scale and later by the stabilizing effect of printing. At all events the 15th century shows only about a dozen new weak formations and in the whole modern period there are only about as many more.

In none of the many verbs which have thus become weak was the change from the strong conjugation a sudden one. Strong forms continued to be used while the weak ones were growing up, and in many cases they continued in use long after the weak inflection had become well established. Thus oke as the past tense of ache was still written throughout the 15th century although the weak form ached had been current for a hundred years. In the same way we find stope beside stepped, rewe beside rowed, clew beside clawed. In a good many cases the strong forms remained in the language well into modern times. Climb, which was conjugated as a weak verb as early as the thirteenth century, still has an alternative past tense clomb not only in Chaucer and Spenser but in Dryden, and the strong past tense crope was more common than crept down to William Shakespeare’s day. Low for laughed, shove for shaved, yold for yielded, etc., were still used in the 16th century although these verbs were already passing over to the weak conjugation two centuries before. While the weak forms commonly won out, this was not always the case. Many strong verbs also had weak forms blowed for blew, knowed for knew, teared for tore that did not survive in the standard speech, while in other cases both forms have continued in use such as cleft –clove, crowed –crew, heave –hove, sheared –shore, shrived –shrove.

For some reason the past participle of strong verbs seems to have been more tenacious than the past tense. In a number of verbs weak participles are later in appearing and the strong form often continued in use after the verb had definitely become weak. In the verb beat the principle beaten has remained the standard form, while in a number of other verbs the strong participle (cloven, graven, hewn, laden, molten, mown, (mis)shapen, shaven, sodden, swollen) are still used, especially as adjectives.

When we subtract the verbs that have been lost completely and the eighty-one that have become weak, there remain just sixty-eight of the Old English strong verbs in the language today. To this number may be added thirteen verbs that are conjugated in both ways or have kept one strong form. These figures indicate how extensive the loss of strong verbs in the language has been. Beside this loss the number of new strong formations has been negligible. Since the irregularity of such verbs constitutes a difficulty in language, the loss in this case must be considered a gain.

The surviving strong verbs have seldom come down to the present day in the form that would represent the normal development of their principal parts in Old English. In all periods of the language they have been subjected to various forms of leveling and analogical influence from one class to another. For example, the verb to slay had in Old English the forms slēan –slōg –slōgon—slægen. These would normally have become slea (pronounced slee) –slough –slain, and the present tense slea actually existed down to the 17th century. The modern slay is reformed from the past participle. The past tense slew is due to the analogy of preterites like blew, grew. In Old English the past tense commonly had a different form in the singular and the plural, and in two large classes of verbs the vowel of the plural was also like that of the past participle bindan –band –bundon –bunden. Consequently, although normally the singular form survived in Modern English, in many cases the vowel of the plural or of the past participle has taken its place. Thus cling, sting, spin, etc., should have had a past tense clang, stang, span (like sing), but these forms have been replaced by clung, stung, spun from the plural and the past participle. The past tense of slide should have been slode, but the plural and the past participle had i and we now say slide –slid –slid. Sometimes a verb has changed from one class to another. Break belonged originally to the fifth class of strong verbs, and had it remained there, would have had a past participle breken. But in Old English it was confused with verbs of the fourth class, which had o in the past participle, whence our form broken. This form has now spread to the past tense. We should be saying brack or brake, and the latter is still used in the Bible, but except in biblical language the current form is now broke. Speak has had a similar development. Almost every strong verb in the language has an interesting prehistory, but the present purpose will be sufficiently served by these few examples of the sort of fluctuation and change that was going on all through the Middle English period and which has not yet ended.

As a result of the leveling of inflections, syntactic and semantic relationships that had been signaled by the endings on words now became ambiguous. Whereas in Old English the grammatical functions of two consecutive nouns were clear from their endings in, say, the nominative and dative cases, in Middle English their functions might be uncertain. The most direct way to avoid this kind of ambiguity is through limiting the possible patterns of word order. The process of development from the highly synthetic stage of Old English to the highly analytic stages of Late Middle English and Modern English can be seen in the Peterborough Chronicle. Written in installments between 1070 and 1154, this text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle spans the period from Old English to Early Middle English. Within the continuations of the text it is possible to trace first a significant loss of inflections and afterwards a corresponding rigidity of word order, making clear the direction of cause and effect. This process of development and the reality of Middle English as a separate stage of the language grammatically (as well as phonologically and lexically) can be seen in the patterns of subject and verb. In addition to the Modern English order SV, Old English had VS and, in subordinate clauses, S...V (with the finite verb in final position). All of these patterns are still possible even in the last years of the Peterborough Chronicle. Thus, the word order looked much like that of Old English at a time when the inflectional system looked much like that of Modern English. As Bruce Mitchell writes, “the language of the Peterborough Chronicle 1122-1154 is Middle, not Modern English. It is transitional [1; 4; 20; 46].

It is important to emphasize that these changes which affected the grammatical structure of English after the Norman Conquest were not the result of contact with the French language. Certain idioms and syntactic usages that appear in Middle English are clearly the result of such contact. But the decay of inflections and the confusion of forms that constitute the truly significant development in Middle English grammar are the result of the Norman Conquest only insofar as that event brought about conditions favorable to such changes. By removing the authority that a standard variety of English would have, the Norman Conquest made it easier for grammatical changes to go forward unchecked. Beyond this it is not considered a factor in syntactic changes [4; 20; 38; 43; 46; 54].