The OE verb, its grammatical categories and morphological types.
The OE verbs were characterized by many peculiar features. They had synthetic forms and analytical forms were beginning to develop. The non-finite forms had little in common with the finite forms but shared many features with the nominal parts of speech.
Classification:
1. Finite They had the following categories:
Tense – Present and Past (NB no Future! – future actions were expressed by the Present Tense forms);
Mood – Indicative, Imperative, Superlative;
Person – 1st, 2nd, 3rd;
Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl);
Morphological types – strong and weak, preterite present(12), anomalous (4)
Principal parts: infinitive, past sing, past pl, Participle 2
2. Non-finite:
Infinitiveresembled the Noun and had the category of:
· Case – Nominative (Nom) and Dative (Dat)
e.g. Nom beran (uninflected) – Dat to berenne(inflected, indicated direction or purpose);
Participles 1, 2 resembled the Verb, the Noun and the Adjective and had the following categories:
Tense – Present (Participle 1) and Past (Participle 2);
Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl);
Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N);
Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc);
Voice – Active (Part. 1, 2) and Passive (Part 2).
Preterite-Present Verbs
There were 12 of these verbs and most of them later turned into Modal Verbs.