Morphological classification of verbs

The majority of OE verbs fell into two great divisions: the strong verbs and the weak verbs. Besides these two main groups there were a few others which will be treated under the general heading of "minor" groups. The main difference between the strong and weak verbs lay in the means of forming the principal parts, or the "stems" of the verb.

The following chart gives a general idea of the morphological classification of OE verbs.

Table 4.2

Morphological classification of Old English verbs

Strong verbs

The strong verbs formed their stems by means of vowel gradation (ablaut) in the root and by adding certain suffixes; in some verbs vowel gradation was accompanied by consonant interchanges. The strong verbs had four stems, as they distinguished two stems in the past tense – one for the 1st and 3rd person singular, indicative mood, the other – for the other past tense forms, indicative and subjunctive.

There were about three hundred strong verbs in OE. They were native words descending from PG with parallels in other OG languages; many of them had a high frequency of occurrence and were basic items of the vocabulary widely used in word derivation and word com­pounding.

The strong verbs in OE (as well as in other OG languages) are usually divided into seven classes.

Classes from 1 to 6 use vowel gradation which goes back to the IE ablaut-series modified in different phonetic conditions in accordance with PG and Early OE sound changes. Class 7 includes reduplicating verbs, which originally built their past forms by means of repeating the root-morpheme; this doubled root gave rise to a specific kind of root-vowel interchange.

As seen from Table 4.3, the principal forms of all the strong verbs have the same endings irrespective of class: 1) -an for the infinitive, 2) zero ending in the past sing stem, 3) -on in the form of past pl., 4) -en for Participle II.

Two of these markers – the zero-ending in the second stem and -en in Participle II – are found only in strong verbs and should be noted as their specific characteristics. The classes differ in the series of root-vowels used to distinguish the four stems. However, only several classes and subclasses make a distinction between four vowels as markers of the four stems – see Class 2, 3b andc, 4 and 5b; some classes distinguish only three grades of ablaut and consequently have the same root vowel in two stems out of four (Class 1, 3a, 5a); two classes, 6 and 7, use only two vowels in their gradation series.

The classes of strong verbs – like the morphological classes of nouns – differed in the number of verbs and, consequently, in their role and weight in the language.

Table 4.3

Strong verbs in Old English

Principal forms Classes	Infinitive	Past Singular	Past Plural	Participle II	NE
	writan	wrāt	writon	writen	write
	(a) cēosan (b) bū¥an	ceas bēa¥	curon bu¥on	coren bo¥en	choose bow
	(a) findan (b) helpan (c) feohtan	fand healp feaht	fundon hulpon fuhton	funden holpen fohten	find help fight
	beran	bær	bæron	boren	bear
	(a)cweðan (b)sittan	cwæð sæt	cwædon sæton	cweden seten	say sit
	scacan	scōc	scōcon	scacen	shake
	(a) hātan   (b) ¥rōwan	hēt (heht) ¥rēow	hēton (hehton) ¥rēowon	hāten ¥rōwen	'call', 'name' grow

The 2^nd stem is called “past singular” though it is the form of the 1^st and 3^rd person indicative only; “past plural” is the stem used to build the 2^nd p. sg. indicative, the plural forms of the indicative and all the forms of the subjunctive.

Participle II is often marked by the prefix ¥e-, e.g. ¥e-written, ¥e-coren.

Classes 1 and 3 were the most numerous of all – about 60 and 80 verbs, respectively; within Class 3 the first group – with a nasal or nasal plus a plosive in the root (findan ‘find’, rinnan ‘run’) included almost 40 verbs, which was about as much as the number of verbs in Class 2; the rest of the classes had from 10 to 15 verbs each. In view of the subsequent interinfluence and mixture of classes it is also noteworthy that some classes in OE had similar forms.

Vowel gradation in the system of strong verbs was often accompanied by interchanges of consonants caused by Verner's Law and some subse­quent changes of voiced and voiceless fricatives in the 3^rd and 4^th forms. The interchange [s ~ z] which arose under Verner's Law was transformed into [s ~ r] due to rhotacism and acquired another interchange [s ~ z] after the Early OE voicing of fricatives. Consequently, the verbs whose root ended in [s] or [z] could have the following interchange:

Z s r r

cēosan cēas curon coren ‘choose’ (Class 2)

Verbs with an interdental fricative have similar variant with voiced and voiceless [θ, ð] and the consonant [d], which had developed from [ð] in the process of hardening:

ð θ d d

sniþan snāþ snidon sniden ‘cut’ (Class 1)

Verbs with the root ending in [f/v] displayed the usual OE interchange of the voiced and voiceless positional variants of fricatives:

V f v v

ceorfan cearf curfon corfen ‘carve’ (Class 3)

Verbs with consonant interchanges could belong to any class, pro­vided that they contained a fricative consonant. That does not mean, however, that every verb with a fricative used a consonant interchange, for instance rīsan, a strong verb of Class 1, alternated [s] with [z] but not with (r): rīsan – rās – rison – risen ‘rise’. Towards the end of the OE period the consonant interchanges disappeared.

Weak verbs

The weak verbs derived their past tense stem and the stem of participle II from the present tense stem with the help of the dental suffix -d- or -t-; normally they did not change their root vowel, but in some verbs suffixation was accompanied by a vowel interchange.

The number of weak verbs in OE by far exceeded that of strong verbs. In fact, all the verbs, with the exception of the strong verbs and the minor groups (which make a total of about 315-320 units) were weak. Their number was constantly growing since all new verbs derived from other stems were conjugated weak (except derivatives of strong verbs with prefixes). Among the weak verbs there were many derivatives of OE noun and adjective stems and also derivatives of strong verbs built from one of their stems (usually the second stem, i.e. past sg), e.g.

OE talu n tellan v NE ‘tale, tell’

OE full adj fyllan v NE ‘full, fill’

OE findan, v str. fandian v NE ‘find, find out’

As has already been pointed out, weak verbs formed their past and participle II by means of the dental suffix -d- or -t- (a specifically Germanic trait). In OE the weak verbs are subdivided into three classes differing in 1) the ending of the Infinitive, 2) the sonority of the suffix, and 3) the sounds preceding the suffix. The principal forms of the verbs in the three classes are given in Table 4.4, with several subclasses in Class I.

The main differences between the classes were as follows.

In Class I the infinitive ended in -an, seldom -ian (-ian occurs after [r]); the past form had-de, -ede or -te; participle II was marked by -d, -edor -t. Some verbs of Class I had a double consonant in the infinitive (subclass b), others had a vowel interchange in the root, used together with suffixation (types e and f). Weak verbs of this class were divided into regular and irregular. Regular verbs were most numerous; all of them were influenced by palatal mutation in all the forms. If the root of a verb ended in a voiceless consonant the dental suffix –de turned into –te.

Minor groups of verbs differed from the weak and strong verbs but were not homogeneous either. Some of them combined certain features of the strong and weak verbs in a peculiar way ("preterite-present" verbs); others were suppletive or altogether anomalous.

The most important group of these verbs includes the so-called "preterite-presents" or "past-present" verbs. Originally the present tense forms of these verbs were past tense forms (or, more precisely, IE perfect forms, denoting past actions relevant for the present). Later these forms acquired a present meaning but preserved many formal features of the past tense. Most of these verbs had new past tense forms built with the help of the dental suffix. Some of them also acquired the forms of the verbals: participles and infinitives; most verbs did not have a full paradigm and were in this sense "defective".

In OE there were twelve preterite-present verbs. Six of them have survived in Mod E: OE ā¥ ‘owe, ought’; cunnan, cann ‘can’; dear(r) ‘dare’, sculan, sceal ‘shall’; ma¥an, mæ¥ ‘may’; mōt ‘must’.

Table 4.5