Peterite-Present verbs.

a type of Germanic verb whose present system is historically (and formally) a strong verb past tense. In Modern English grammars some of such verbs are called modals.

In OE there were 12 preterite-present verbs. But only 6 survived in ModE ought,shall, must, can, dare, may. These verbs have a peculiar formation of basic stems and forms. Their Present Tense corresponds to the Past of strong verbs while their Past is derived from the Past weak verbs.

Preterite-present verbs:	are the mixture of the strong and weak groups
have a peculiar place within the system of Old English
are the most basic in the language
are the most archaic type of verb that still exists
are completely closed, which means that no new verbs will be added to it, although verbs can be lost from its ranks

In the Pre-Old Germanic languages there used to be 3 aspects: the continuous, momentaneous & resultative.

The Continuousaspect presents actions as developing in time, without reference to any completion.

The Momentaneous aspect presents the action as heading towardscomplition.

The Resultative aspect presents the action as completed and having brought about a new stage of things

The Preterite-Present verbs originated from the so-called resultative aspect.

Preterite-present verbs signify the present result of a past action. Most of the preterite-present verbs did not indicate actions, but expressed a kind of attitude to an action denoted by another verb in the Infinitive. In other words, they were used like modal verbs, and 6 of them eventually developed into modern modal verbs: NE ought, dare, shall, can, may, must

Old English noun. Morphological classification of nouns. Types of declensions.

The OE noun had two grammatical or morphological categories: number and case. In addition, nouns distinguished three genders, but this distinction was not a grammatical category; it was merely a classifying feature accounting, alongside other features, for the division of nouns into morphological classes.

The category of number consisted of two members, singular and plural.

The noun had four cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative and Accusative. In most declensions two, or even three, forms were homonymous, so that the formal distinction of cases was less consistent than that of numbers.

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