Changes in the verbal system in Middle English and New English

English

verbs
1.2. Weak verbs
1.3. Origin of modern irregular verbs
1.4. Minor groups

of verbs
2. Grammatical categories of the English verb
3. Non-finite forms

complicated process (as compared to the evolution of the nominal

system).
The morphology of the verb displayed
2 distinct tendencies of development:
it underwent considerable simplifying changes, which affected the synthetic forms;
It became far more complicated owing to the growth of new, analytical forms and new grammatical categories.

verb system, though to a lesser extent than the nominal

system.
2. the simplification and levelling of forms made the verb conjugation more regular and uniform;
3. the OE morphological classification of verbs was practically broken up.

nominal features and developed verbal features: they acquired
- new

analytical forms and
- new categories like the finite verb.
10. The changes in the verb system extended over a long period: from Late OE till Late NE (unlike the changes in the nominal system, the new developments in the verb system were not limited to a short span of two or three hundred years).
Even in the age of Shakespeare the verb system was in some respects different from that of Mod E.

of the word phrase and the sentence;
the growth of predicative

constructions;
the development of the complex sentences and of diverse means of connecting clauses.
Syntactic changes are mostly observable in Late ME and in NE in periods of literary efflorescence.

decay of OE inflections was apparent in the conjugation of

the verb.
Many markers of the grammatical forms of the verb were reduced, levelled and lost in ME and Early NE.
The reduction, levelling and loss of endings resulted in the increased neutralisation of formal oppositions and the growth of homonymy.

forms of the verb reflect dialectal differences and tendencies of

potential changes.
The intermixture of dialectal features in the speech of London and in the literary language of the Renaissance played an important role in the formation of the verb paradigm.
The Early ME dialects supplied a store of parallel variant forms, some of which entered literary English and were accepted as standard.
The simplifying changes in the verb morphology affected the distinction of the grammatical categories to a varying degree.

and phonetic changes.
The most important change in the system of

strong verbs was the reduction in the number of stems from four to three, by removing the dictinction between the two past tense stems.
One of the most important events in the history was the transition of the strong verbs into weak.

two past tense stems had the same gradation vowels only

in Classes 6 and 7 (the vast majority of English verbs – which were weak – had a single stem for all the past forms). These circumstances facilitated analogical levelling, which occurred largely in Late ME. Its direction depended on the dialect, and on the class of the verb.
In ME the final syllables of the stems, like all final syllables, were weakened. In Early NE most of them were lost.
- the OE endings -an, -on, -en (of the 1st, 3rd, 4th principal forms) were all reduced to ME -en;
- consequently, in Classes 6 and 7, where the infinitive and the participle had the same gradation vowel, these forms fell together;
- in Classes 1 and 3a it led to the coincidence of the 3rd and 4th principal forms.
- In the ensuing period, the final -n was lost in the infinitive and the past tense plural, but was sometimes preserved in Participle II, probably to distinguish the participle from other forms. Thus, despite phonetic reduction, -n was sometimes retained to show an essential grammatical distinction:
NE stole – stolen, spoke – spoken, but bound – bound.

Early NE many strong verbs began to form their Past

and Participle II with the help of the dental suffix instead of vowel gradation.
Therefore the number of strong verbs decreased.
In OE there were about 300 strong verbs. Some of them dropped out of use owing to changes in the vocabulary, while most of the remaining verbs became weak.
Out of 195 OE strong verbs preserved in the language only 67 have retained strong forms with root-vowel interchanges roughly corresponding to the OE gradation series.
128 verbs acquired weak forms;
most of these verbs belong nowadays to “regular” or “standard” verbs.

climb, help, swallow (Class 3),
wash, fare (Class 6).

The number of new verbs which joined the classes of strong verbs, was very small:
- several former weak verbs
NE wear, dig, stick
- three borrowings
take, thrive (from O Scand), strive (from O French)

The transition of the strong verbs into weak

and final syllables became very unstable and was lost.
This

change eliminated the differences between the two classes and also the distinctions between the 2nd and 3d principal forms, thus reducing the number of stems in the weak verbs from three to two.
The marker of the Past tense and Participle II employed by the weak verbs – the dental suffix
-d/-t – proved to be very productive in all historical periods.
This simple and regular way of form-building, employed by the majority of OE verbs, attracted hundreds of new verbs in ME and NE.

they:
- preserved in ME and NE almost all the verbs

that were typical of the group in OE,
- added to their group the majority of borrowed verbs and about 70 verbs originally strong:
to call
to want Scandinavian borrowings
to guess

to pierce
to punish French borrowings
to finish

to contribute
to create Latin borrowings
to distribute

are the immediate source of modern standard (regular) verbs.

in NE

due to different phonetic processes and changes on analogy the two principal groups of verbs that existed in OE, strong and weak, gave us two principal groups of modern verbs: regular and irregular.
Neither regular nor irregular verbs were directly derived from either of the OE groups of strong and weak verbs.

regular, although there were a number of irregular ones.

In

ME not only the few OE irregular verbs were preserved, but also new irregular verbs appeared.
SOURCES:
1) the disappearance of the division of verbs into strong and weak: most strong verbs lost their regular pattern of conjugation and became irregular.
2) weak verbs of the Class 1: their irregularity was due to several reasons (today the employ various form-building devices: the dental suffix, vowel and consonant interchanges).
2.1. verbs with a long root vowel, the root ending in -t / -d
2.2. verbs with a long root vowel, the root ending in a consonant other than -t / -d
2.3. verbs with a short root vowel, the root ending in -t / -d
3) some loan words borrowed into the language in ME and NE.

in -t or -d:
OE mētan — mētte — mētt

ME meten — mette — mett
NE meet — met — met
In ME the root vowel of the 2nd and 3rd forms is shortened due to the rhythmic tendency of the language requiring the shortening of all vowels if followed by two consonants. The vowel interchange in ME is quantitative.
In NE the long root vowel in the first form due to the Great Vowel Shift is changed qualitatively, so now we have both quantitative and qualitative vowel interchange in the verb.

in a consonant other than -t or -d:
OE cēpan

— cēpte — cēpt
ME kepen — kepte — kept
NE keep — kept — kept
In ME the dental suffixation of the 2nd and 3rd forms is supplemented with a quantitative vowel interchange (similar to 2.1.)
in NE we have both vowel interchange (quantitative and qualitative) and suffixation as form-building means.

in -t or -d:
OE settan — sette —

sett
ME setten — sette — sett
NE set — set — set
No changes took place in the root vowel, the ending disappeared due to the final reduction of unstressed vowels, and now the verb forms its forms without any material manifestation.

of weak verbs examples of irregularity can be found. One

of them is the verb to make.

OE macian — macode — macod
ME maken — makede — maked
NE make — made — made

ME and NE
e.g. Scandinavian strong verb borrowings preserved their original

vowel interchange and thus are nowadays irregular:
give — gave — given
take — took — taken
get — got — gotten.
e.g. the French borrowing to catch (caught, caught) which is irregular formed its forms on analogy with the verb to teach (taught, taught).

phonetic and analogical changes affected their forms,
semantic changes which affected

their functions.
several preterite-present verbs died out.
the surviving verbs lost some of their old forms and grammatical distinctions but retained many specific peculiarities.
They lost the forms of the verbals and the distinctions between the forms of number and mood in the present tense.
In NE their paradigms have been reduced to two forms or even to one.

Ind. sg 1st and 3rd p.) was used not only

in the singular but also in the plural along with cunnen, the descendant of OE pl cunnon; the latter, as well as the Subj. Forms cunnen, cunne died out by the end of the ME period. The Past tense Ind. and Subj. appears in ME in two variants: couth(e) and coud(e). Couth became obsolete in NE, but coud was preserved.
The insertion of l in spelling (could) may be due to the analogy of should and would where l was etymologically justified.
In ME the verb can, and especially its Past Participle is still used in the original meaning ‘know’.
However, can, couth/coude is much more common as a modal verb indicating physical or mental ability.
Gradually it replaced OE mæZ, ME may and OE mōt in these meanings.

used as the main form of the Present tense, alongside

mowen/mowe, and as the only form of the Present in Early NE.
Its Infinitive and Participle I went out of use;
its Past tense might (from OE meahte, mihte, ME mighte) was retained as the Past form, Indicative and Subjunctive.
The ME may has narrowed its meaning, for some of its functions, i.e. indication of physical and mental ability, have passed to the verb can.

lost many of its old forms: the plural forms, the

forms of Pres. Subj., the Inf.,
it has retained only two forms shall and should (ME sholde, sholde(n) – Past Ind. and Subj.
In ME it was no longer used as a notional verb of full predication but was widely used, in both forms, as a modal verb, to express necessity, obligation and order.
The form sholde also occurred in Pres. tense contexts as the Subj. of shall;
Eventually it lost its ties with shall and became a separate modal verb with its own sphere of meanings.
In Early NE should the Past tense form of shall, should has acquired the meaning of the present and has turned into a new modal verb - should

of the OE preterite-present mōt ‘can’.

The Present tense forms

have been lost while
must has acquired the meaning of obligation
and is now treated as a Present tense form.

tense forms of OE āZan, which have acquired the meaning

of the present and developed into a new modal verb,
ME ought(e)
the original meaning ‘possess’ is preserved in the other descendant of the OE verb, NE owe, and also in own related to the same root.

unlike other verbs it has lost most of its peculiarities

characteristic of preterite-presents and of modern modal verbs: it usually takes -s in the 3rd p. and has a standard Past form dared.

The only traces of its origin are the negative and interrogative forms, which can be built without the auxiliary do.

many features typical of the group of preterite-present verbs.
In

ME it was commonly used as a modal verb expressing volition.
In the course of time it formed a system with shall, as both verbs, shall and will (and also should and would), began to weaken their lexical meanings and change into auxiliaries.

unusual history.
In OE its Past form was built from

a different root and had a weak ending: ēode; its Part. II ended in –n, similarly with strong verbs (Ze) Zān.
In ME the verb acquired a new Past tense wente, which came from an entirely different verb, OE wendan (ME wenden, NE wend).
Its OE Past form wente had entered the paradigm of goon (NE go, went), while wend acquired a new past form wended.
Thus the verb go remained a suppletive verb, though its OE Past was replaced by a new form.

suppletive forms from the OE and more remote periods of

history.
It owes its variety of forms to suppletion and to the dialectal divergence in OE and ME and to the inclusion of various dialectal traits in literary English.
The Past tense forms were fairly homogeneous in all the dialects. The forms of the Pres. tense were derived from different roots and displayed considerable dialectal differences.
ME am and are(n) came from the Midland (Anglian) dialects and replaced the West Saxon eom, sint/sindon.
In OE the forms with the initial b- - from bēon – were synonymous and interchangeable with the other forms but in Late ME and NE they acquired a new function: they were used as forms of the Subj. and the Imper. Moods or in reference to the future and were thus opposed to the forms of the Pres.

4 categories:
person,
number,
tense,
mood.
In Middle English and New English there gradually

developed 3 more grammatical categories:
order,
voice,
aspect.

new grammatical means for the formation - analytical forms.
These

analytical forms developed from free word combinations of the OE verbs:
habban, beon/wesan + an infinitive / participle.
In the free word combination habban, beon/wesan + an infinitive (or participle)
the first element was gradually losing its lexical meaning, the second — its grammatical one,
thus tending to become notionally and grammatically inseparable, idiomatic.

and became more consistent and regular;
towards the end of the

period— in the 15th c. — they were neutralised in most positions.
In the 13th and 14th c. the ending -en turned into the main, almost universal, marker of the plural forms of the verb: it was used in both tenses of the Indicative and Subjunctive moods (the variants in -eth and -es-in the Present Indicative were used only in the Southern and Northern dialects).
In most classes of strong verbs (except Class 6 and 7) there was an additional distinctive feature between the singular and plural forms in the Past tense of the Indicative mood: different root-vowels (see fand, fandest, fand and founden in the table). But both ways of indicating plural turned out to be very unstable.
The ending -en was frequently missed out in the late 14th c. and was dropped in the 15th;
the Past tense stems of the strong verbs merged into one form (e.g. found, wrote).
All number distinctions were thus lost with the exception of the 2nd and 3rd p., Pres. tense Indic. mood:
the singular forms were marked by the endings -est and –eth/-es and were formerly opposed to the forms of the plural.

of Person were maintained in ME, though they became more

variable.
The OE endings of the 3rd person singular — -þ, -eþ, -iaþ — merged into a single ending -(e)th.
The variant ending of the 3rd p. -es was a new marker first recorded in the Northern dialects.
It is believed that -s was borrowed from the plural forms which commonly ended in -es in the North.
It spread to the singular and began to be used as a variant in the 2nd and 3rd person, but later was restricted to the 3rd.
In Chaucer's works we still find the old ending –eth. Shakespeare uses both forms, but forms in -s begin to prevail.
He rideth out of halle. (Chaucer)
(‘He rides out of the hall')
My life ... sinks down to death. (Shakespeare)
but also: But beauty's waste hath in the world an end. (Shakespeare)

OE was represented by 3 mood forms, one for each

of the moods:
Indicative, Subjunctive,Imperative
The formal differences between the moods were greatly obscured owing to the reduction of endings and levelling of forms.
In OE only a few forms of the Indicative and Subjunctive mood were homonymous:
the 1st p. sg of the Pres.Tense and the 1st and 3rd p. sg of the Past.
In ME the homonymy of the mood forms grew.
The Indicative and Subjunctive moods could no longer be distinguished in the plural, when -en became the dominant inflection of the Indicative plural in the Present and Past.
The reduction and loss of this ending (-en) in Early NE took place in all the forms irrespective of mood.
In the 15th c. after the two Past tense stems of the strong verbs merged, all the forms of the moods in the Past tense fell together with the exception of the verb to be, which retained a distinct form of the Subjunctive in the Past singular – were as opposed to was.

in OE did not show whether the events were probable

or contrary to fact, but it had two tense forms — past and present, which in the course of history developed into 2 Subjunctive Moods:
- I/he be present — out of the OE present tense form of the Subjunctive Mood;
- I/he were present — out of the OE past tense form of the Subjunctive Mood.
The difference between these 2 Subjunctive Moods now is in the shade of probability, and not in the tense, the second one denoting events which are contrary to fact. At the end of ME and the beginning of NE 2 more Subjunctive Mood forms appeared making use of the analytical form building means:
- I/he should be present — to show events which are probable, though problematic;
- I should be present — to show imaginary events,
he would be present contrary to fact.
OE sculan > should, willan > would

preserved in the verb paradigm through all historical periods.
the Past

tense was shown with the help of the dental suffix in the weak verbs, and with the help of the root-vowel interchange - in the strong verbs:
OE NE
cuman – cuom - cōmon come - came
(differ in the root-vowels and endings)
The grammatical category of tense acquired new categorial forms.
In ME a special form for the future tense appeared out of the free combination:
OE sculan / willan + infinitive.
This free combination of words was split into 2 groups:
1) in the free word group, the modal meaning is preserved:
You shall do it — necessity
I will do it — volition
2) in the fixed word combination the independent meaning is lost and the combination is perceived as the future tense form: I shall go there. You will go there

formed in ME
SOURCES of the Perfect forms:
1) the OE “possessive”

construction habban + past participle of a transitive verb, which served as an attribute to the object.

Hīe hæfdon hīera cyninZ āworþēnne
‘They had already overthrown their king’.

2) the OE phrase OE bon + Past Participle of intransitive verbs > to be + Participle II. In these phrases the participle usually agreed with the subject.

The younge sonne hath in the Ram his halve course y-runne
‘The young sun has run its half-course in the Ram’.
The same idea of order is sometimes expressed with the help of the combination:
This gentleman is happily arrived. Now he is gone.

category of Voice.
There was no regular opposition of forms

in the verb paradigm to show the relation of the action to the grammatical subject.
Only in the system of verbals the participles of transitive verbs (Present and Past) were contrasted as having an active and a passive meaning.
The analytical passive forms developed from OE verb phrases
consisting of OE bon (NE be) and weoran ('become') and Part. II of transitive verbs.
weoran (bon) + Past Participle
OE hē wēarþ ofslæZen ‘he was slain’
ME engendered is the flour ‘the flower is generated [born]’
OE bon was used as a link-verb with a predicative expressed by Part. II to denote a state resulting from a previous action;
the construction with OE weoran 'become' indicated the transition into the state expressed by the participle.

formed in ME on the basis of the free combination

of

ben (bon ) + Present Participle
Singinge hē was ... al the dai ‘he was singing all the day’
The development of Aspect is linked up with the growth of the Continuous forms.
In the 15th and 16th c. be + Part. I was confused with a synonymous phrase – be + the prep.on + a verbal noun.
By that time the Present Participle and the verbal noun had lost their formal differences:
- Part. I was built with the help of -ing
- the verbal noun had the word-building suffix -ing, which had ousted the equivalent OE suffix -un.
She wyst not... whether she was a-wakyng or a-slepe. (Caxton)
('She did not know whether she was awake (was on waking) or asleep.')
A Knyght ... had been on huntynge. (Malory)
('A knight had been hunting (lit. "on hunting").

in Late OE and ME and came to occupy a

most important place in the grammatical system.
Analytical forms developed from free word groups (phrases, syntactical constructions).
The first component of these phrases gradually weakened or even lost its lexical meaning and turned into a grammatical marker,
the second component retained its lexical meaning and acquired a new grammatical value in the compound form.
The growth of analytical forms of the verb is a common Germanic tendency, though it manifected itself a long time after PG split into separate languages. The beginnings of these changes are dated in Late OE and in ME.
The growth of compound forms from free verb phrases was a long and complicated process which extended over many hundred years and included several kinds of changes.

the patterns of verb phrases;
2. consist of several component

parts:
1) an auxiliary verb, sometimes two or three auxiliary verbs, which serve as a grammatical marker
2) a non-finite form – Infinitive or Participle, - which serves as a grammatical marker and expresses the lexical meaning of the form:
NE would have been taken
3. Idiomatic meaning
The analytical form should be idiomatic: its meaning is not equivalent to the sum of meanings of the component parts.
The development of these properties is known as the process of “grammatisation". Some verb phrases have been completely grammatised (the Perfect forms).
Some of them have not been fully grammatised to this day and are not regarded as ideal analytical forms in modern grammars (the Future tense).

to become a member of a grammatical category and a

paradigm the new form had to acquire another important quality: a specific meaning of its own which would be contrasted to the meaning of its opposite member within the grammatical category (e. g. Past is opposed to Present, plural is opposed to singular).
It was only at the later stages of development that such semantic oppositions were formed.
5. Co-existence of old and new
Originally the verb phrases and the new compound forms were used as synonyms (or "near synonyms") of the old synthetic forms; gradually the semantic differences between the forms grew: the new forms acquired a specific meaning while the application of the old forms was narrowed.
6. Unrestricted use
The new analytical forms should be used unrestrictedly in different varieties of the language and should embrace verbs of different lexical meanings.

the Infinitive and two Participles.
Their nominal features were more

pronounced than their verbal features. The Infinitive was a sort of verbal noun, Participles I and II, verbal adjectives.
Trends of the evolution in ME and NE:
1) gradual loss of most nominal features (except syntactical functions) - loss of case distinctions in the infinitive and of forms of agreement in the Participles can be accounted for by the simplifying changes in the verb paradigm, and the decay of the OE inflectional system

2) growth of verbal features.

Early ME.
OE wrītan and tō wrītanne > ME (to)

writen > NE (to) write.
tō was placed in OE before the inflected infinitive to show direction or purpose.
In ME tō lost its prepositional force and changed into a formal sign of the Infinitive.
The Infinitive with to does not necessarily express purpose. In order to reinforce the meaning of purpose for was sometimes placed before the to-infinitive.
To lyven in delit was evere his wone (Chaucer)
‘To live in delight was always his habit’.

It may have been important to preserve the Infinitive marker to in order to distinguish the infinitive from other forms built from the Present tense stem, which had lost their endings.

Passive Infinitive = bēon + Part. II (its semantic contrast

to the simple form is not consistent)
- the Active Infinitive could sometimes have a passive meaning:
1) hwelce þā hæþnan Zodas sindon tō weorþianne
'which heathen gods were to be worshipped' - active form, passive meaning;
2) Sceolde witedōm bēon Zefyllod.
‘The prophesy should be fulfilled‘.-passive form and meaning
In ME texts different types of compound Inf. are found:
the Pass. Inf., the Perf. Inf. in the Active and Pass. forms:
3) þey beþ to ben blamed eft þarfore (c. 1300)
'they are to be blamed for that again‘
4) He moste han knowen love and his servyse
And been a feestlych man as fressh as May (Chaucer)
'He must have known love and its service and (must have) been a jolly man, as fresh as May‘.

ME and NE.

Participle I had an active meaning and

expressed a process or quality simultaneous with the events described by the predicate of the sentence.

Participle II had an active or passive meaning depending on the transitivity of the verb, and expressed a preceding action or its results in the subsequent situation.

of special interest.
It displayed considerable dialectal differences:
1) the Southern

and Midland forms were derived from the present tense stem with the help of -ing(e),
2) other dialects had forms in -inde, -ende and -ande.
The first of these variants – finding(e), looking(e) – became the dominant form in the literary language.
Participle I coincided with the verbal noun, which was formed in OE with the help of the suffixes -ung and -ing,
but had preserved only -ing in ME.
The forms of Part. I made a balanced system:
Passive vs Active
Perfect vs non-Perfect
Participle II remained outside this system, correlated to the forms of Part. I through formal differences and certain semantic affinities and oppositions .

later than the forms of the Infinitive.
The first compound forms

are found in the records in the 15th c. The seid Duke of Suffolk being most trostid with you... (Paston Letters)
‘The said Duke of Suffolk being most trusted by you’.
In the 17th c. Part. I is already used in all the four forms which it can build today: Perf. and non-Perf., Passive and Active:
1) Now I must take leave of our common mother, the earth, so worthily called in respect of her great merits of us; for she receiveth us being born, she feeds and clotheth us brought forth, and lastly, as forsaken wholly of nature, she receiveth us into her lap and covers us. (Peacham, 17th c.)
2) Julius Caesar, having spent the whole day in the field about his military affairs, divided the night also for three several uses ... (Peacham)

system of the Verbals.
The Gerund is associated with compound forms

of the -ing-form used in the functions of a noun.
The Gerund appeared as a result of a blend between the OE present Participle ending in ‘-ende’ and the OE verbal noun ending in ‘-inge’:
- from the verbal noun the Gerund acquired the form (the ending ‘-ing(e)’),
- under the influence of the Participle it became more “verbal” in meaning.
The earliest instances of analytical forms of the Gerund are found in the age of the Literary Renaissance, - when the Inf. and Part. I possessed already a complete set of compound forms. The formal pattern set by the Part. was repeated in the new forms of the Gerund.

in the texts of the 17th and 18th c.:
1)

To let him spend his time no more at home,
Which would be great impeachment to his age
In having known no travel in his youth.
(Shakespeare)
2) Yet afraid they were, it seemed: for presently the doors had their wooden ribs crushed in pieces by being beaten together.
(Th. Dekker, early 17th c.). 3) This man, after having been long buffeted by adversity, went abroad.
(Smollett, 18th c.)

system of the verbals towards the 17th and 18th c.

are practically the same as in NE.
The forms of the Infinitive and the -ing-form (Participle I and Gerund) make up grammatical categories similar to those of the finite verb:
Voice,
Time-Correlation,
Aspect.
3. The relations between the members of these grammatical categories in the verbals roughly corresponded to those of the finite forms, both semantically and formally.

or neutralised.
4.1. The Active Infinitive could still express a

passive meaning:
His noble free offers left us nothing to aske. (Bacon, 17th c.)
4.2. The non-Perfect forms in many contexts acquired the meaning of the perfect form:
And so, giving her sufficient means and money, for his own reputation sake, to rid her from Bristol and ship her for London, on his wife he bestowed all those
jewels.
(Dekker) (giving is equivalent here to having given).

English has become more complicated
2. New non-finite forms appear (the

gerund).
3. Conjugation of verbals and disappearance of their nominal categories.
4. New grammatical categories are formed.
5. The already existing grammatical categories acquire new forms.
6. The predominant regularity of the verbs and their conjugation in OE gives way to many diverse irregularities.