The Categories of Finite forms. Verb Conjugation

The grammatical categories of the verb.

Morphological structure of OE. The Verb in OE.

Lecture X.

Slide 1.

The system of verb-forms in OE was characterized by many peculiar features. While the paradigm of the Noun, the Adjective and the Pronoun was in general more complicated than it is at present, the OE verb paradigm was in some respects simpler; Though the verb had numerous person and number endings, it had fewer grammatical categories than in Modern English.

In OE the agreement of the verb-predicate with the subject was expressed by means of two grammatical categories: the number and the person. The verbs had the usual 2 numbers and 3 persons.

Besides these grammatical categories the finite verbs had specifically verbal categories of mood and tense.

The category of tense consisted of two sets of forms: Present and Past. The past tense referred the action to the past without differentiating between prior or non-prior action. The present tense referred the action to any period of time except past: that is to the Present or to the Future. It is probable that with verbs of perfective meaning the Present tense form regularly denoted a future action, while with verbs of non-completed action it could denote both present and future actions.

Slide 2.

The category of mood consisted of the Indicative, Subjunctive and Imperative moods, which were distinguished in the paradigm, only in some forms of the Past Tense the difference between the moods was lost.

The Old English subjunctive expressed a very general meaning of presenting events as unreal or probable. Besides, the subjunctive mood was often used in indirect speech to describe events of which the speaker was not absolutely certain.

The Tense and Mood systems in OE on the whole reproduced the Common Germanic system. New features began to develop in later OE, when the first analytical verb-forms appeared.

Слайд 3.

The problems of Aspect (вид), Voice and Analytical forms.

Other verb categories, commonly found in the verb systems of many IE languages were either absent in OE or were so poorly developed, that their inclusion in the list of grammatical categories is doubtful. They are the categories of Aspect and Voice.

It was believed that in OE verbs with the prefix -ჳe had a perfective meaning (that is, denoted complete actions) while the same verbs without the prefix had an imperfective meaning.

The two sets of verb-forms constituted the grammatical category of aspect. But this assumption has now been rejected by most scholars, as the contrast doesn’t appear to be regular enough.

The category of Voice in OE is also a matter of dispute. The problem of voice is linked up with the problem of analytical verb-forms in OE.

In OE written records there are a few relicts (остатки) of synthetic mediopassive forms, which together with the active forms might have constituted the category of voice in Common Germanic.

However, in OE new analytical forms with a passive meaning began to develop from free combinations. The syntactical combinations of the OE bēon (be) and weorðan (become) with Participle II were used to denote a state, resulting from a completed action. During the OE period these combinations gradually acquired the features of analytical forms, but only in the ME period they were systematically contrasted to active forms as forms of the passive voice.

Слайд 4.

Questions:

1. By what grammatical categories was the agreement of the verbs with the subject expressed?

2. What were the specifically verbal categories that the finite verbs had?

3. What sets of forms did the category of tense consist of?

4. What mood expressed a very general meaning of presenting events as unreal or probable?

5. What mood was used in indirect speech to describe events of which the speaker was not absolutely certain?

6. What mood was used to state an action as real in OE?

Слайд 5.

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