OLD ENGLISH SYNTAX

LECTURE6

PRETERITE - PRESENT VERBS

Strong verbs

The conjugation of verbs

The OE verb has 2 tenses: the Present tense and the Past tense, three moods: the Indicative, the Subjunctive and the Imperative. There are also the verbals -the infinitive and the first and second participles.

We will illustrate the conjugation of some types of strong verbs.

Wrītan (write) Singular

Present Present t Past Past

Indicative Subjunctive Imperative Indicative Subjunctive

1. write write ----- wrāt write

2. writest, wrītst write writ write write

3. writeƥ, wrīt write _ wrät write

Plural

writaƥ written writaƥ writon writen

Infinitive Participle

wrītan First Second

Dat*. tō writende (wrītanne) wrītende (3e) written

(*Every infinitive can have a dative case used with the preposition tō).

Preterite - Present verbs have a peculiar place within the system of OE. Their present tense corresponds to the past of strong verbs, while their past is derived according to the past of weak verbs. Thus, in OE the present tense of the verb witan (know) is wät for the singular and witon for the plural, while its past is wisse or wiste. Its present thus corresponds to the past of class I strong verbs (compare räs -rison), while its past is derived on the pattern of weak verbs (wisse < witte).

These verbs appeared as the result of some forms of the Past Indefinite singular of strong verbs having been understood as Present Indefinite forms, e. g there existed a strong l class verb: witan - wat - witon - witen. The Past Indefinite Singular was understood as the Present Indefinite form. The new verbs which came into existence in this way were defective from the very beginning because they had no Infinitive of their own, sometimes they had no Participle forms. The Past Indefinite forms of these new verbs were formed by means of dental suffixes:

1. wāt wisse (wiste)

2. wast wissest

3. wāt wisse

Plural witon wisson

1. The order of words in OE

2. The meaning of case forms.

3. The usage of pronouns.

4. Tense forms in OE.

5. The category of mood in OE.

OE was a synthetical language: the relations between the words in a sentence were expressed by means of flexions. The order of words in a sentence was not as strict as it is now. The words were rather free to change their places without causing any changes in the meaning of a whole sentence. In general if the sentence was not interrogative, the order of words was direct, the subject preceded the predicate or the predicate group.

Stræt wæs stãn - fãh - улица была вымощена разноцветными камнями.

In interrogative sentences the rule is that predicate comes first, as in the following examples: Eart ƥū sē Bēowulf, sepe wiƥ Brecan wunne? (Art thou the Bëowulf pwho competed with Breca?)

Sometimes when there was a secondary member at the beginning of the sentence, the order of words could be indirect; [θ] ƥã ãrãs hê from ƥæm slæpe -тогда восстал он ото сна. Sometimes the order of words was indirect though there was no secondary member: Lixte sê lêoma (Засверкал свет). In some cases however the order of words was direct even if there was a secondary member at the beginning of the sentence Nū ic suna mīnun syllan wolde 3ūƥ3ewædu -Теперь я сыну моему дал бы боевые доспехи. In some written monuments of OE especially in poetry the so-called «synthetic» order of words can be met with. It’s the order of words on which between the subject and the predicate there stand many secondary members of the sentence. This synthetic order of words is very typical of «Beowulf» in which in 70% of the order of words are synthetic:

Wē ƥæt ellen - weorc ēstum miclum feohtan fremedon (Мы этот подвиг с большой готовностью, бой совершили).