Strong verbs in OE and their development

The OE verb had numerous persons and number cases, but fewer gram. categ. than NE verb had.

Str. verbs form their Past tense by changing their root vowel, had 4 principle forms:

· Infinitive – wrētan;

· Past sg – wrāt;

· Past pl – writon;

· Participle II – writēn.

Often denoted the most important actions and states. In NE they are mainly irregular verbs.

Had 7 classes (according to the type of vowel gradation/ablaut (Eg: беру – брал):

1. 1-6 classes use vowel gradation;

2. 7 class include reduplication verbs, build their Past tense repeating the root vowel.

3. Some verbs with the root ending in –s; -p; -f employed an interchange of consonants [s → z → r], [θ → ð → d], [f → v];

4. Classes 4 and 5 differed in the stems of Part. II. Classes 2, 3 and 4 – had identical vowels in the stems of Part. II.;

In ME the inflections - an, -on, -en were all reduced to just one inflection à - en.

In NE the ending -n was lost in the Infinitive and preserved in the Participle 2 in order to distinguish these two forms.

In NE Past Singular and Past Plural forms were unified, usually with the Singular form preferred as a unified form because Past Plural and Participle 2 often had similar forms and it was hard to distinguish them (e.g. ME writen (Past Pl) – writen (Part. 2))à the category of Number disappeared in the Verb.

In ModE the subdivision into classes was lost though we still can trace some peculiarities of this or that class in the forms of the irregular verbs.

Re-arrangement:

Weak verbs were not as complex as strong ones and had a greater regularity and simplicity. That’s why they were productive, i.e. all borrowed verbs used weak model of form-building (suffix -t/-d) (e.g. Scand. to skate, Fr. to charm, Lat. to decorate, etc.) and, as it has already been mentioned above, many originally strong verbs turned into weak (e.g. to bake, to laugh, to help, to lie, etc.).

OE preterite-present verbs and anomalous verbs and their further development.

Preterite-present verbs can be referred to minor morphological group. There were 12,only 6 survived in NE

e.g. maзan (may)-мочь

āз (ought)

cunan (can,could)

dear (dare)

sculan (shall,should)

mōt (must)

They denote not action but state.

The conjugation:

1. str. verbs’ Past = the Pres.

2. weak verbs’ Past = the Past

ME

The following changes happened to the preterite-present verbs:

· They lost their Verbals (non-finite forms) (e.g. OE cunnen – Part 2 of cunnan);

· They lost the Number and Mood distinctions (e.g. OE cann (Indicative) – cunne (Subjunctive); OE cann (Sg) – cunnon (Pl)).

NE

The paradigm of the preterite-present verbs (that had already become modal verbs) was reduced to one or two forms (e.g. must (just one form), can, could (just two forms), etc.).

There were several anomalous (dōn (do), willan, beōn, зān (go)). These verbs combined the features of weak and str. verbs. Irregular verbs, which forms are derived from different roots.

beōn, зān were suppletive (зan – Inf.; eode – Past)

Infinitive	Past	Participle 2
strong verb feature (root-sound interchange) + weak verb feature (dental suffix -d)	strong verb feature (suffix -nand prefix ζe -)
dōn	dyde	ζedōn

Re-arrangement:

The example of it we have in NE (willan – will like modal verb and like Future tense of the verb to be)

26. The causes of changes in the morphological system in ME & NE. The origin of modern English regular and irregular noun forms.

In ME the masculine gender became the main. The gender lost its inflections. The OE Nom, Acc, Dat cases fell together into Common case.

The Gen used to denote possession → becomes possessive case (In Singular it was marked by -‘s. In the 17^th – 18^th c. the apostrophe (‘) started to be used in Pl)

In ME the regular plurals usually take –es which is the continuation of OE –as.

I-MUTATION. It is a case of regressive assimilation with –i- or semivowel ‘j’. Eg: fuljan – fūllan (fill – full). We find traces of i-mutation in NE, especially in irregular plurals: foot – feet, goose – geese.

Process of simplification:

· changing in the structure of the word;

· unstable position of gender. Also the principle of analogy – ability of the language to adapt a less common form to a more widely used one. Eg: черное кофе.

Adj – an unchangeable part of speech (except for the degrees of comparison).

Causes for simplification:

1. Influence of the Scandinavian Dialects that were grammatically simpler in comparison with OE Dialects and this influence led to the minimization of grammar.

2. Phonetic reduction of final unstressed syllables (inflections).

3. The preference of the consonantal endings can be explained by the fact that the vowels were more apt to change and reduction then the consonants that in general proved to be more stable.