Anomalous Verbs

NE

ME

OE

Preterite-Present Verbs

Gerund

Infinitive

In OE the Infinitive resembled the Noun and had the category of Case (only two Cases – Nominative (Nom) and Dative (Dat)):

e.g. OE Nom writan (uninflected) – Dat to wrītan ne (inflected, indicated direction or purpose).

In ME the Infinitive lost the Dative Case (the inflected form) and only one form was left:

e.g. ME (to) writ en.

Particle to remained in NE as a formal sign of the infinitive with no meaning of direction or purpose:

e.g. NE (to) writ e.

Though sometimes the traces of these meanings are still visible:

e.g. He came to feed the horses (purpose).

The Gerund appeared only in the 12^th c. Actually it presented a mixture of the OE Verbal Noun (with suffix -unζ/-inζ) and Participle 1 and its characteristics were:

· It took direct object (verbal feature) (e.g. buying a book);

· It could be preceded by an article or a possessive pronoun (noun feature) (e.g. the cleaning of my room, your coming late).

The preterite-present verbs had the following characteristics:

· Their Present -Tense forms resembledPast -Tense forms (Germ. “Präteritum” = past tense, that’s why they were called so);

· Some of these verbs did not have a full paradigm and were called “ defective ”;

· These verbs expressed attitude and were followed by the Infinitive without “to” (NB! Most of these verbs are present-day modal verbs);

· Out of 12 preterite-present verbs only 6 survived in ModE:

āζ (ought), cunnan (can), dear (dare), sculan (shall), maζan (may), mōt (must).

E.g.:

Numb.	Pers.	Present	Past
(formed like Past Tense of strong verbs)	(formed like Past Tense of weak verbs)
cunnan	sculan	cunnan	sculan
Sg	1^st	cann	sceal	cuðe	sceolde
2^nd	canst	scealt	cuðest	sceoldest
3^rd	cann	sceal	cuðe	sceolde
Pl	-	cunnon	sculon	cuðon	sceoldon

The following changes happened to the preterite-present verbs:

· They lost their Verbals (non-finite forms) (e.g. OE cunnen – Part 2 of cunnan);

· They lost the Number and Mood distinctions (e.g. OE cann (Indicative) – cunne (Subjunctive); OE cann (Sg) – cunnon (Pl)).

The paradigm of the preterite-present verbs (that had already become modal verbs) was reduced to one or two forms (e.g. must (just one form), can, could (just two forms), etc.).

They were irregular verbs that combined the features of the weak and strong verbs. There were 4 of them – willan (will), bēon (to be), ζān (to go), dōn (to do).

Willan:

· had the meaning of volition;

· resembled the preterite-present verbs in meaning (attitude) and in function (was followed by the Infinitive without “to”);

· eventually became a modal verb and also together with sculan developed into an auxiliary for the formation of the Future-Tense forms.

Dōn

This verb combined the features of the weak and strong verbs:

Infinitive	Past	Participle 2
strong verb feature (root-sound interchange) + weak verb feature (dental suffix -d)	strong verb feature (suffix -nand prefix ζe -)
dōn	dyde	ζedōn

ζan

This verb was suppletive and also combined the features of the weak and strong verbs:

Period	Infinitive	Past	Participle 2
OE	ζān	ēode (suppletivism + weak verb feature (dental suffix -d))	ζeζān (strong verb feature (suffix -nand prefix ζe -)
ME	goon	wente (suppletivism (from OE wendan) + weak verb feature (dental suffix -t)	goon (strong verb feature (suffix -n))

Bēon

This verb was highly suppletive and in OE employed two separate words/roots (Infinitives):

Present	OE	ME	NE
Numb.	Pers.	wesan	bēon	been	been
Sg	1^st	eom	bēo	am	am
2^nd	eart	bist	art	are
3^rd	is	biþ	is	is
Pl	-	sint	bēoþ	are/arn	are
Past	wesan	been	be
Sg	1^st	w æ s	was	was
2^nd	w ǽ re	wēre	were
3^rd	w æ s	was	was
Pl	-	w ǽ ron	wēren	were

Дата добавления: 2014-01-03