Infinitive

In OE the Infinitive resembled the Noun and had the category of Case (only two Cases – Nominative (Nom) and Dative (Dat)):

e.g. OE Nom writan (uninflected) – Dat to wrītan ne (inflected, indicated direction or purpose).

In ME the Infinitive lost the Dative Case (the inflected form) and only one form was left:

e.g. ME (to) writ en.

Particle to remained in NE as a formal sign of the infinitive with no meaning of direction or purpose:

e.g. NE (to) writ e.

Though sometimes the traces of these meanings are still visible:

e.g. He came to feed the horses (purpose).

Gerund

The Gerund appeared only in the 12^th c. Actually it presented a mixture of the OE Verbal Noun (with suffix -unζ/-inζ) and Participle 1 and its characteristics were:

· It took direct object (verbal feature) (e.g. buying a book);

· It could be preceded by an article or a possessive pronoun (noun feature) (e.g. the cleaning of my room, your coming late).

Preterite-Present Verbs

OE

The preterite-present verbs had the following characteristics:

· Their Present -Tense forms resembledPast -Tense forms (Germ. “Präteritum” = past tense, that’s why they were called so);

· Some of these verbs did not have a full paradigm and were called “ defective ”;

· These verbs expressed attitude and were followed by the Infinitive without “to” (NB! Most of these verbs are present-day modal verbs);

· Out of 12 preterite-present verbs only 6 survived in ModE:

āζ (ought), cunnan (can), dear (dare), sculan (shall), maζan (may), mōt (must).

E.g.:

Numb.	Pers.	Present	Past
(formed like Past Tense of strong verbs)	(formed like Past Tense of weak verbs)
cunnan	sculan	cunnan	sculan
Sg	1st	cann	sceal	cuðe	sceolde
2nd	canst	scealt	cuðest	sceoldest
3rd	cann	sceal	cuðe	sceolde
Pl	-	cunnon	sculon	cuðon	sceoldon

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.).