Minor groups of verbs

The main differences between strong and weak verbs.

1) The way of building of principle forms. Strong verbs employ vowel gradation, weak v. – dental suffix.

2) In the number of principle forms: 4 – in strong, 3 – in weak v.

3) Different endings. Strong v. for Past sg. had zero ending, PII – ending – en. For weak verbs - en/on, and PII – of weak verbs – ending – d.

Tothese belong: preterite-present verbs, anomalous verbs, suppletive verbs.

1) Preterite - Present verbs were equal to the Present Tense forms of these verbs and were originally past-tense forms of the strong verbs, which had acquired the meaning of the present: the Past Tense forms were built with the help of the dental suffix. They are past by form and present by meaning. There were twice Preterite –Present verbs: “must” 2 “ought”

e.g: past – moste, in present – must

2) Anomalous verbs (irregular) combined form - building means of both strong and weak verbs. There were 3 of them:

Indefinite: buan, don, willan

Past: bude, dyde, wolde

Part II: bun, gedone, wolde

3) Suppletive verbs: beon “to be”, gan “to go”, Inf: gan. Past: eode, Part II: Zegan.

Two verbs with the same meaning beon and wesan (strong verbs –5^th 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”

wesan

1^st Pers. Sing. eon Pl. sint

2^nd P.S. eart

3^rd P.S. is

beon

1^st P.s. beo Pl. beo¶

2^nd P.S. bist/ bis

3^rd P.S. bi¶

Past Tense: “weasan” – derived from the root wes – “beon” had no past tense forms. This already in OE these two verbs had common past tense forms:

1. P.S. wes Pl. wæron

2. P.S. were

3. P.S. wes

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.

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