Categories of the Old English Verb

The verb in Old English has the following categories: person, number, tense and mood. Number is not a specifically verbal category but rather a way of agreement of the predicate with the subject represented by the opposition of the singular and the plural. As dual number by that time was very seldom used, no corresponding form of the verb is found in Old English.The choice of singular or plural form depends on the number of the noun/pronoun subject of the sentence. This opposition is valid for all the verbs in all the other categorial forms.

The category of person is represented by all the three persons, though this opposition is neutralised in many positions. Present Tense Singular has all the forms, whereas in plural the category is not shown. Past tense singular had only one form for the 1st and the 3rd person, and in the Imperative and Subjunctive mood the category of person is absent.

The category of mood was represented by the opposition of three moods - Indicative - Subjunctive - Imperative.

The Indicative mood represents the action as a real fact

The Imperative expresses order, or request to a second person. It may be used in the singular or in the plural:

sin t meh\v2et-h\vuJu (sing me something)

JebiddaQ ww mid cfissum wordum (ask you with these words)

Previously in early Germanic (well represented in Gothic) the Imperative mood had three persons, and in the third person it had a tinge of optative meaning - how can you call the order or the instruction directed to the third person? This optative meaning is still preserved in some cases of Old English Imperative, even though it is directed towards the second person. But in this case its optative meaning depends on the semantics of the verb-predicate

- Be thou happy, friend of men

There is practically no controversy as to the terms the Indicative and the Imperative mood, but as far as the Subjunctive is concerned, opinions differ. Some call it Conjunctive Mood, as it always is a relative not the absolute mood. Some call it Optative because in Old English optative meaning ^s much more frequent than it is in the present-day Subjunctive mood forms. It may be called Conditional or even Oblique but we must always bear in mind that this is a mood that renders the general meaning of unreality or supposition. Some oppose the Indicative and the Imperative to the Subjunctive as the moods of fact and the mood of fancy. The action expressed by this mood form is somewhat shifted from reality, even though it might not contradict it altogether. Some mental attitude to what is being said in Subjunctive mood is usually implied -condition, desire, obligation, supposition, perplexity, doubt,

uncertainty or unreality. So it is used in conditional sentences of unreal condition - the unreality of condition made it clear that a verb in the indicative would be superfluous:

Jif du wsere her. mere min brooor dead; (if he were here, my brother wouldn't be dead)

It may be also found in the subclauses of purpose and concession and is common for temporal clauses:

hey ft and bletsao oe ser heswelte (he will eat and bless you before he/supposedly will/ die)

et ofminum huntooe Sset ou me bletsije (eat of my game /of what I have hunted/ so that you /should/ bless me)

It might be used in simple sentences expressing wishes - these were much more frequent than they are now; these uses are somehow neutralised, levelled and may be found in some set phrases the origin of which may be traced only by professional linguists (please), or the very verb may have been lost and we regard many happy returns of the day as a self-sufficient phrase.

sunu min, hlyste minre lore (my son, that you would listen to my words)

sunu min, sjj seo wiriJnys ofer me (oh, my son let that condemnation be for me)

Another very frequent use of the subjunctive is the employment of this form in the structures of indirect speech. A certain grain of incredulity to someone else's speech shifts the connection of the actions of the verb from: the reality;

h<?ssede \\ewsre of Truso (he said that he was from Truso) i hessede hew^re nemned Alfred (he said that his name was i Alfred)

The category of Tense was represented by the opposition past –nonpast (or as they say more correctly preterit - nonpreterit). The current form for the; non-preterite is the Present. But present time reference is only one of the meanings rendered by this form. In general it seems to be a most universal form of the verb. It was used (and is used now) when seemingly universal truths are uttered, it is used in reference to moment of speech and a lengthy period including both previous and following this moment; they may be fairly lengthy. In Old English it was commonly used to denote future, as well. So, the major cases of the use of the present tense in various meanings

will be: the actual present, the "now"

Aelfred cyninJ hated Jretan WasrferS biscop (king Alfred orders/asks to greet Warferth bishop...) ic oe sende o2£t spell (I, who send this story)

in reference to a regular or habitual action se cyninJ and oa_ ricostan men drmcacf meolc (the king and the richest men drink milk) oonne semao hy ealle toweard o3e m feo (then they all run towards that property) with future time reference:

syx dajas ouwyrcst: on odm seofooan 6u rest (you will work six days, on the seventh you will rest) oonne oyoa in brinjst, heytt and bletsao 6e aer h<°swelte

(when you bring it he will eat and bless you before he dies)

We cannot say that this use is quite obsolete now. It is not. A future action which is planned and about to be performed in the nearest future is rendered by the present tense form of the verb (Next week our team playswith Maribor); a future action in adverbial clauses of time and condition (When my mother comes, she will look after my children; If he comes we'll know what happened there). These may be called grammatical archaisms; these structures were common in Old English, and as there was no ambiguity as to the time reference of the action they were not replaced by newer forms in Middle English. There are other uses of the Present (]ustimagine, I come home yesterday and what do I see - a pool of water fight in the middle of my room - emphatic present, to make the narration more vivid; or historical present: In 1066 William Duke of Normandy claims his rights to the English crown) - these seem to belong to the sphere of stylistics, as they are deliberately employed to make special emphasis on the ^rb, to make the listener or the reader think of the action as if going on before his eyes. Such instances may be found in Old English, too:

us secJacfbec hu... (the books have said to us how...),

but they are rather treated as timeless present {the books said,say and will say)

As far as the future time reference is concerned, it may be specified by using adverbs of future time, by the use of special verbs with future timerelevance. The verbs of wishes and commands are among such markers, because an order can never be directed into the past; wishes and obligations are usually associated with the future. So other markers of future time relevance were the verbs willan, sculan, etc.

forosem Jesculon wepan...(you will weep because of this)

Jif Je willa ominum hus Jeseon... (if you want to see my house)

Sometimes the structures with the verb bean were used, the future time relevance of these structures is semantically conditioned ic ndt hwcenne mine daJas a Jane beoo (I dont know when my days are ended = will be ended)

The four grammatical categories listed above were supplemented by some other ways of expressing grammatical meanings. One of the less happy grammatical categories is that of aspect. Here the distinction between imperfective aspect, expressing an action in its duration without indicating its beginning or its end, and the perfective aspect which expressed an action in its completion, where its beginning and its end can be traced. To express it, the verbs with prefixes such as a,-, be-, for-, Je-, of- and to- are used. The most "grammatical" of all is the prefix Je-. The instances of the use of verbs with the prefix Je- are very common in Old English, wntan- Jewiitan, bindan - Jebindan, feohtan - Jefeohtan. The verbs with the

prefix Je- denoted a completed action whereas the verbs without this prefixdenoted an action with no indication as to the completion of the action. 6d Rebecca Sset Jehirde and Esau utd Jan wass (when Rebecca heard it and Esau departed...) So a question arises as to distinguishing another grammatical category of the Old English verb - that of perfect! vity, or the existence of perfective and non-perfective aspect.

Some recent explorations have shown that the very same prefix is not necessarily associated only with purely grammatical overtones. Whereas perfective meaning of the verbs with this prefix can hardly be disputed, there exist a great number of words where the very lexical meaning of the word is changed by adding it.This is observed in such pairs as sittan - Jesittan (to sit - to occupy); beran - Jeberan (to carry - to bear a child). At the same time verbs without any prefix might have perfective meanings in themselves, such verbs as cuman have such meaning, and in the phrase maniJoft Jecwseo (many people often said) a prefixed verb has the meaning rather of repeated but not completed action. So common efforts in ousting the perfective aspect were crowned by general non-recognition of this category. We may speak rather of lexical ways of expressing the idea of perfectivity. This may be compared with the existence in present-day English of a set of non-recognised half-systemic ways of expressing some grammatical meaning, such as ingressive (inchoative) aspect

come to believe

fall to thinking

begin wondering

get tired, married, interested

or single occurrence actions

to give a nod, a smile, a shrug etc.

Apart from these there existed a whole set of analytical formations that gave in future all the present-day analytical verb forms. The forms of the perfect, future tense, passive voice, analytical forms of the subjunctive mood and even continuous, though came into the language together with the Norman invasion, had their roots within the English language. The structures that gave rise to these forms were:

habban + P II

Originally it meant that the subject owned a thing having a certain feature as a result of an action performed upon it. Then they acquired the meaning of result of an action

(this king had his hsefde se cyninJ his here on tu tonumen army divided into two parts)

It looks very much like the present-day perfect, but the participle in this construction agreed with the noun (in case the noun was in the plural it would sound like his heriJeas tonumene (his armies divided..). The participle agreed in number and case (accusative sg - ace. pi). Thus, it can be compared with the present-day structure / have my car repaired which everyone would agree is not a perfect tense but an instance of the use of the complex object.

The combination of the verb beon/wesan with Participle II rendered the grammatical meaning of voice, yet had no status of an analytical verb form (on the same grounds, because the participle was changeable and agreed with the subject of the sentence):

On oasm asftran 3<are oe s<°arcebiscop wss Jematryrod (on the

next year after the archbishop was tortured to death...)

In the plural it would be - oa menn wseron Jemartyrode

The verbs willan/sculan in combination with the infinitive rendered future time relevance, yet they were not devoid of their primary modal meaning:

wille ic asecJan - I will say = I want to say

hie sceolon beon Jesamnode - they shall (must) be gathered

(or, when used in the past tense, their modal meanings approached the structures to the periphrastic forms of the subjunctive)

nolde ic sweord beran, Jif ic wiste hu ic meahte wicf hem

wicfgripan (I would not carry my sword if I knew how else I could challenge them)

The combination of beon/wesan with Participle I gave structures corresponding in meaning to the continuous form:

sebdt \vses yrnende under sejie - the boat was running under sail.

But true analytical forms, where only the auxiliary verb changes and renders only grammatical meanings and the notional part remains unchangeable did not exist in Old English.

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