Old English Verb System Overview

The Old English Verb System

• The Old English verb system was less developed than it is today, with fewer forms and different categories.
• The system was complex, with verbs falling into numerous morphological classes and employing various form-building means.

Form-Building Devices

• Gradation (vowel interchange) was used to build verb forms.
• Suffixes, inflections, and suppletion were also used to form verbs.
• Inflections were often combined with vowel interchange or suppletion to form paradigmatic forms.

Non-Finite Forms of the Verb

• The non-finite forms of the verb in Old English were the infinitive and two participles.
• The infinitive had a suffix -an/ian and had the grammatical category of case (nominative and dative).
• The infinitive was often used with verbs like willan, sculan, and weordan to render various grammatical meanings.

Participles

• Participles had the categories of number, gender, and case, and were declined like strong adjectives.
• Participles were active in meaning and expressed present time relevance or simultaneity with the tense of the finite verb.

Participle I

• Formed by adding the suffix -ende to the stem of the infinitive.
• Expressed actions and states happening at the same time as the main verb.
• Had categories of number, gender, and case, and was declined like a strong adjective.

Participle II

• Expressed actions and states resulting from past action.
• Was passive in meaning with transitive verbs, and rendered only temporal meaning of the past with intransitive verbs.
• Formed by vowel interchange (gradation) and the suffix -cn (strong verbs) or the dental suffix -d/t (weak verbs).
• Often marked by the prefix je-, but sometimes found without it.

Categories of the Old English Verb

• The Old English verb had the categories of person, number, tense, and mood.
• Number was not a specifically verbal category, but rather a way of agreement of the predicate with the subject.
• The dual number was very seldom used in Old English.