Linguistic characteristics of the German and English languages

Nouns

Despite losing the slightly more complex system of inflectional endings, Middle English retains two separate noun-ending patterns from Old English. Compare, for example, the early Modern English words "engel" (angel) and "nome" (name):

First and second pronouns survive largely unchanged, with only minor spelling variations. In the third person, the masculine accusative singular became 'him'. The feminine form was replaced by a form of the demonstrative that developed into 'she', but unsteadily--'ho' remains in some areas for a long time. The lack of a strong standard written form between the eleventh and the fifteenth century makes these changes hard to map.

Simplification of noun morphology affected the grammatical categories of the noun in different ways and to a varying degree.

The grammatical category of Case was preserved but underwent profound changes.

2) after a voiceless consonant, e.g. ME bookes [ґbo:k?s] > [bu:ks] > [buks], NE books;

3) after sibilants and affricates [s, z, ?, t?, dз] ME dishes [ґdi??s] > [ґdi?iz], NE dishes.

The ME pl ending -en, used as a variant marker with some nouns lost its former productivity, so that in Standard Mod E it is found only in oxen, brethren, and children. The small group of ME nouns with homonymous forms of number has been further reduced to three exceptions in Mod E: deer, sheep, and swine. The group of former root-stems has survived also only as exceptions: man, tooth and the like.

15. Old English Dialects and Written Records

Ruthwell Cross, a religions poem on a tall stone cross near the village of Ruthwell in South-East Scotland.

Runic Casket, made of whalebone, and found in France near the town Clermond-Ferrand, now in the British Muscum in London. The Runic text is a short poem about whalebone( of the 9^th century.)

After the Anglo-Saxon came into contact with the Roman culture the Runic alphabet was superseded by the Latin. Since the very earliest times there were four dialects in OE:

Nourthumbrian (1) , spoken by Angles living north of the Humber. Mercian West-Saxon(2), spoken by Angles between the Humber and Thames. The Mercian dialect: Translation of the Psalter (9 ^th c.) and hymns.The Runic texts of the Ruthwell Cross and Frank's Casket (Runic), translation of the gospels, Caedmon's Humn and Bede's Dying Song.

Kentish, the language of the Jutes and Frisians. The West dialect is represented by the works of kind Alfred (lived 849-900), both original compositions of translations of Latin texts, also by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (till 891), works of the abbot Aelfric (10 century) and sermons of Wultstan (early 11^thcentury).: Translations of Psalms L-LXX and old charters .(псалма).

The superiority of the West - Saxon dialect both in quantity and importance of the documents using it contirms its dominating position as the literary language of the period.

The epic poems of the OE period: Beowulf, Genesis, Exodus, Judith, and poems by the monk Gynewulf: Eleng Andreas, Juliana and other were written in Anglian dialect but have been kept in West-Saxon dialect.

All over the country in the Kingdoms of England, all kinds of legal documents were written and copied. At first they were made in Latin, with English names and place names spelt by means of Latin letters, later they were also written in the local dialects.

There is a great variety of prose texts, part of them translations from the Latin. Among the prose works we should first of all note the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, (VII-IX centuries), the year book of the events in English history, starting at 787, written later in West- Saxon.

King Alfred's Orosius is a long text based on the Historia adversus paganos (a History against the Heathens by the Spanish monk Paulus Orosius, 5^th century).

Ttranslations made either by Alfred himself or on his orders is that of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. We mention among Alfred's translations that of the Pastoral Care by Pope Gregory I.(ab.540-604) and others.

As we know OE scribes used two kinds of letters: the runes and the letters of the Latin alphabet. Like any alphabetic writing, OE writing was based on a phonetic principle: every letter indicated a separate sound. Some of OE letters indicated two or more sounds, according to their positional variants in the word.

16. Origing of modern irregular noun forms

All modern irregular noun forms can be subdevided into several groups according to their origin:

Noun going back to the original a-stem declension, neuter gender which had no ending in the nominative and accusative plural even in OE.

Sheep - sheep;

Sing. Plur.

Nom: sceap sceap

Acc. Deor deor

In OE the forms of this nouns were homonimous bouth in the sing. and plur. Nom. and Acc. case.

some nouns of n -stem declension preserving the pluralforms.

Ox -oxen. Sg. Pl.

OE: oxa oxan

The original s-stem declension

OE cild -cildre

ME childchildren

NE childchildren

In ME the final vowel was neutralized(or levelled)UE and the ending N added on analogy with the nouns of the original N-stem declinsion.It shows that the power of the N-stem declinsion still relatively strong. (cild+s ( szr (- the result of rotasism )= cildru.

remnants of the original root-stem declension.

Foot-feet, tooth-teeth, mouse-mice( the result of mutation in OE.

The structure of the Oenoun consists of 3 elements: the root+stem-building suffix+the ending;

Root-stem nouns never had any stem-building suffix, that's why the ending was added on immediately to the root of the noun and caused mutation of the root-vowel.

Footfot + iz fet. W

Words borrowed in early NE from Latin.These words were borrowed by learning people from sintific books, who used them, trying to preserve the original form. (detum - deta). When in the course of further history these words entered the language of the whole people they tended to add regular plural endings which gave rise to such doublets.(molecula, moleculal, moleculas).

17. The OE vowel

The development of vowels in Early OE consisted of the modification of separate vowels, and also of the modification of entire sets of vowels. The change begins with growing variation in pronunciation, which manifests itself in the appearance of numerous allophones: after the stage of increased variation, some allophones prevail over the others and a replacement takes place. It may result in the splitting of phonemes and their numerical growth, which fills in the “empty boxes” of the system or introduces new distinctive features. It may also lead to the merging of old phonemes, as their new prevailing allophones can fall together.

The vocalic system in OE included 2 subsystems: monophthongs, diphthongs. All vowels existed in the pairs: жждолг, a в, e з, o ф, i о , u ы, y y долг (У готтов не было в, жждолг, ф) В виде пар существовали и дифтонги: ea eaдолг, eo eoдолг, ie ieдолг. The major factor in OE was a category of quantity vowels. It means, that all OE vowels, including diphthongs, could be both long and short. It it the system of vowels on the beginning of OE. The new system came with Anglo-Saxon tribes (жоанная): In most cases these new processes represent result of influence of the next sounds and called the COMBINATORY CHANGES.

1. Influence of the next consonant-Breaking (diph thongization) Short vowel were diphthong-sed before consonant. The short vowels ж и е, a. Short vowels ж and е were diph-nized: ж turn into ea before combinations r + согл, l + согл, h + согл, and before h on the end of a word: wearю,healp,eahta,seah e.g.: [e] > [eo] in OE deorc, NE dark.

e turn into eo before combinations r + согл, l + velar concordant c and h, before h on the end of a word: weorюan,meolcan,feoh

The essence of breaking consists that front vowel assimilates with the subsequent firm consonants by development of a sound of glide, which forms a diphthong. The glide, together with the original monophthong formed a diphthong.

Palatalization

After the palatal consonants [k'], [sk'] and [j] short and long [e] and [ж] turned into diphthongs with a more front close vowel as their first element, e.g. OE scжmu > sceamu (NE shame). In the resulting diphthong the initial [i] or [e] must have been unstressed but later the stress shifted to the first element, which turned into the nucleus of the diphthong, to conform with the structure of OE diphthongs. This process is known as “diphthongisation after palatal consonants”. It observes in Wessex dialect. ж - ea sceal , cearu. ждолг - ea долг scзвwian, ззвfon. a - ea scacan- sceacan. o - eo sceort, ceort. e - ie scield, з iefan

Contraction -(стяжение) The vowels contracted into 1 when they were separated by h and H disappeared. e+a=eo (sehan - seon. i+a=eo (tihan- teon). a+a=ea (slehan - slean). o+a=o долг (fohan - fon)

Mutation -перегласовка

Mutation is the change of one vowel to another through the influence of a vowel in the succeeding syllable. 2 types: i-Umlaut mutation (palatal mutation) and Back mutation (guttural)-гортанный.

1) i-Umlaut - under its influence vowel moves ahead or narrowed.

ж - e sжtjan - settan, a-e talu - tellan, o-e ofost - efstan, ф -з dфm - dзman, u - y fullian - fyllan , u - y cuю- cyююan. Changes in diphthongs: ea - ie, ea долг - ie долг, eo - ie, eo долг - ie долг.

Back mutation - U-Umlaut it is caused by back vowels (a, o, u). In Wessex dialect take place only before consonants r, l, p, f, m. a-ea saru - searu, i- io hira - hioru, e-eo herot - heorot. The words which begin with wi - mutation occurred without dependence from the subsequent concordant: widu - wiodu

U-umlaut was optiona(facultative) and i-umlaut was the main (системообразующ).

Development of monophthongs

The PG short [a] and the long [a:], which had arisen in West and North Germanic, underwent similar alterations in Early OE: they were fronted, and in the process of fronting, they split into several sounds. The principal regular direction of the change - [a] > [ж] and [a:] > [ж:] - is often referred to as the fronting or palatalisation of [a, a:]. The other directions can be interpreted as positional deviations or restrictions to this trend: short [a] could change to [o] or [в] and long [a:] became [o:] before a nasal; the preservation of the short [a] was caused by a back vowel in the next syllable.

Development of diphthongs

The PG diphthongs - [ei, ai, iu, eu, au] - underwent regular independent changes in Early OE; they took place in all phonetic conditions irrespective of environment. The diphthongs with the i-glide were monophthongised into [i:] and [a:], respectively; the diphthongs in -u were reflected as long diphthongs [io:], [eo:] and [ea:].

18. Phonetic processes in Old English (the system of vowels)

Changes of stressed vowels in Early Old English

The development of vowels in Early OE consisted of the modification of separate vowels, and also of the modification of entire sets of vowels. The change begins with growing variation in pronunciation, which manifests itself in the appearance of numerous allophones: after the stage of increased variation, some allophones prevail over the others and a replacement takes place. It may result in the splitting of phonemes and their numerical growth, which fills in the “empty boxes” of the system or introduces new distinctive features. It may also lead to the merging of old phonemes, as their new prevailing allophones can fall together.

Independent changes. Development of monophthongs

The PG short [a] and the long [a:], which had arisen in West and North Germanic, underwent similar alterations in Early OE: they were fronted, and in the process of fronting, they split into several sounds. The principal regular direction of the change - [a] > [ж] and [a:] > [ж:] - is often referred to as the fronting or palatalisation of [a, a:]. The other directions can be interpreted as positional deviations or restrictions to this trend: short [a] could change to [o] or [в] and long [a:] became [o:] before a nasal; the preservation of the short [a] was caused by a back vowel in the next syllable.

Development of diphthongs

The PG diphthongs - [ei, ai, iu, eu, au] - underwent regular independent changes in Early OE; they took place in all phonetic conditions irrespective of environment. The diphthongs with the i-glide were monophthongised into [i:] and [a:], respectively; the diphthongs in -u were reflected as long diphthongs [io:], [eo:] and [ea:].

Assimilative vowel changes: Breaking and Diphthongization

The tendency to assimilative vowel change, characteristic of later PG and of the OG languages, accounts for many modifications of vowels in Early OE. Under the influence of succeeding and preceding consonants some Early OE monophthongs developed into diphthongs. If a front vowel stood before a velar consonant there developed a short glide between them, as the organs of speech prepared themselves for the transition from one sound to the other. The glide, together with the original monophthong formed a diphthong. The front vowels [i], [e] and the newly developed [ж], changed into diphthongs with a back glide when they stood before [h], before long (doubled) [ll] or [l] plus another consonant, and before [r] plus other consonants, e.g.: [e] > [eo] in OE deorc, NE dark. The change is known as breaking or fracture. Breaking produced a new set of vowels in OE - the short diphthongs [ea] and [eo]; they could enter the system as counterparts of the long [ea:], [eo:], which had developed from PG prototypes. Breaking was unevenly spread among the OE dialects: it was more characteristic of West Saxon than of the Anglian dialects. Diphthongisation of vowels could also be caused by preceding consonants: a glide arose after palatal consonants as a sort of transition to the succeeding vowel. After the palatal consonants [k'], [sk'] and [j] short and long [e] and [ж] turned into diphthongs with a more front close vowel as their first element, e.g. OE scжmu > sceamu (NE shame). In the resulting diphthong the initial [i] or [e] must have been unstressed but later the stress shifted to the first element, which turned into the nucleus of the diphthong, to conform with the structure of OE diphthongs. This process is known as “diphthongisation after palatal consonants”.

Palatal mutation

Mutation is the change of one vowel to another through the influence of a vowel in the succeeding syllable. The most important series of vowel mutations, shared in varying degrees by all OE languages (except Gothic), is known as “i-Umlaut” or “palatal mutation”. Palatal mutation is the fronting and raising of vowels through the influence of [i] or [j] in the immediately following syllable. The vowel was fronted and made narrower so as to approach the articulation of [i]. Due to the reduction of final syllables the conditions which caused palatal mutation, that is [i] or [j], had disappeared in most words by the age of writing; these sounds were weakened to [e] or were altogether lost. The labialized front vowels [y] and [y:] arose through palatal mutation from [u] and [u:], respectively, and turned into new phonemes, when the conditions that caused them had disappeared (cf. mыs and mўs). The diphthongs [ie, ie:] were largely due to palatal mutation and became phonemic in the same way, though soon they were confused with [y, y:]. Palatal mutation led to the growth of new vowel interchanges and to the increased variability of the root-morphemes: owing to palatal mutation many related words and grammatical forms acquired new root-vowel interchanges. We find variants of morphemes with an interchange of root-vowels in the grammatical forms mыs, mўs (NE mouse, mice), bфc, bзc (NE book, books), since the plural was originally built by adding -iz. (Traces of palatal mutation are preserved in many modern words and forms, e.g. mouse - mice, foot - feet, blood - bleed; despite later phonetic changes, the original cause of the inner change is i-umlaut).

19. Phonetic processes in Old English (the system of consonants)

Treatment of fricatives. Hardening. Rhotacism. Voicing and Devoicing.

After the changes under Grimm's Law and Verner's Law had PG had the following two sets of fricative consonants: voiceless [f, ?, x, s] and voiced [v, р, г, z]. In WG and in Early OE the difference between two groups was supported by new features. PG voiced fricatives tended to be hardened to corresponding plosives while voiceless fricatives, being contrasted to them primarily as fricatives to plosives, developed new voiced allophones. The PG voiced [р] (due to Verner's Law) was always hardened to [d] in OE and other WG languages, e.g. Icel, gфрr and OE зфd. The two other fricatives, [v] and [г] were hardened to [b] and [g] initially and after nasals, otherwise they remained fricatives. PG [z] underwent a phonetic modification through the stage of [з] into [r] and thus became a sonorant, which ultimately merged with the older IE [r]. This process is termed rhotacism. In the meantime or somewhat later the PG set of voiceless fricatives [f, ?, x, s] and also those of the voiced fricaties which had not turned into plosives, that is, [v] and [г], were subjected to a new process of voicing and devoicing. In Early OE they became or remained voiced intervocally and between vowels, sonorants and voiced consonants; they remained or became voiceless in other environments, namely, initially, finally and next to other voiceless consonants. In all WG languages, at an early stage of their independent history, most consonants were lengthened after a short vowel before [l]. This process is known as “geminantion” or “doubling” of consonants, e.g. fuljan > fyllan (NE fill). The change did not affect the sonorant [r], e.g OE werian (NE wear); nor did it operate if the consonant was preceded by a long vowel, e.g. OE dзman, mзtan (NE deem, meet).

20. Velar consonants in Early Old English. Growth of New Phonemes

The velar consonants [k, g, x, г] were palatalized before a front vowel, and sometimes also after a front vowel, unless followed by a back vowel. Thus in OE cild (NE child) the velar consonant [k] was softened to [k'] as it stood before the front vowel [i] - [kild] > [k'ild]; similarly [k] became [k'] in OE spr?c (NE speech) after a front vowel but not in OE sprecan (NE speak).

Loss of consonants in some positions

Nasal sonorants were regularly lost before fricative consonants; in the process the preceding vowel was proably nasalized and lengthened, e.g. OHG fimf - OE fоf (NE five). It should be also mentioned the loss of consonants in unstressed final syllables. [j] was regularly dropped in suffixes after producing various changes in the root.

21. OE Verb. Grammatical categories and morphologiacal classification

In Finite Forms they were: mood (3), tense (2), number (2), person(3).

1) There were 3 moods: Ind, Subj, Imp. They had approximately the same meanings which they have today with the exception of the Subj Mood, which was frequently used to express a problematic action and was found in indirect speech. It was much more often than in the Present.

2) The OE verbs had 2 tenses: the Present and the Past. The present form was used to denote both tenses present and future (..to denote Pr and Future actions as in other Germanic langeages). There were no analytical forms, only inflexion. Futurity was shown lexically with the help of adverbial modifiers and the context. It is true that in OE there were combinations with the verbs: sculan (shall), willan (will), but they had there own lexical meaning. They were not auxiliary verbs. From these constructions the future forms (the future tense was) were formed later.

3) The category of person was represented only in the Indicative sg and in the Imperative in OE. There was no indication of person in the Ind pl or in the Subj forms. (One form for all persons.) Three persons were distinguished only in the present tense of the Ind Mood.

4) The Ind and Subj had 2 numbers in both tenses. The Imp Mood also distinguished 2 numbers. No dual number. At that time they were ?homonymous? forms. In the Subj M the past and the present pl were the same and also in the sg present and past. In the Indicative they were homonymous forms in the sing and plural. Lфcian (look) wv2 (weak verb class 2).

Tense Only two tenses are distinguished by inflexion, present and past (sometimes called preterite in the grammars); both cover a wider range of meanings than they would in Modern English. So he cymeth (present tense) could mean `he comes', `he is coming', or `he will come'; he com (past tense) could mean `he came', `he has come', `he was coming', or `he had come'. However, the periphrastic tense-forms (i.e. forms with `have', `will', `be', etc., plus infinitive or participle) illustrated in the translations here are already beginning to develop in Old English.

Mood OE verbs, like MnE verbs, have three moods, indicative (for statements and questions), imperative (for commands), and subjunctive (for wishes, hypothetical conditions, etc.). The main point of difference here is that in MnE we use the subjunctive mood much less frequently, and have few distinctive subjunctive forms (see your Traditional Grammar booklet, 2.6.iii) c), and Mitchell & Robinson, Index of Subjects, under "Moods"); OE regularly indicates the subjunctive by inflexion, and you should learn to recognise subjunctive forms.

Strong and weak verbs As in MnE, verbs may be `strong' (forming their past tense by vowel-change) or `weak' (forming their past tense by adding -d-); but in OE, the proportion of strong verbs is higher. You should concentrate particularly on the endings of these forms.

II. Verbal Paradigms: As in every other Gmc. language, the Old English verbal system had two principle divisions: the strong verbs (whose past-tense forms were formed via vowel gradation) and the weak verbs (whose past-tense forms were built by means of a suffix). In the Old English verbal system, moreover, there are only two tenses: past and non-past (i.e. present and future), there was no inflected passive voice (except the past passive hatte 'was called' < h'tan), three moods (indicative, imperative, and subjunctive. Verbs are inflected for person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and number (singular and plural) in addition to tense. Dual subjects are treated as plurals. There are two participles, a present and a past.

4."Weak" Verb classes: In contrast to the strong verbs and their ablaut, the weak verbs are primarily identified by the fact that they form the past tense by means of a suffix. The weak verbs, however, are further divided into three classes, depending on the relation ship between the infinitive and the past tense forms. In Wk. Class I, the infinitive ends in either -an or -ian, and always has an umlauted stem vowel, and the preterite suffix is either -ed- or -d-. Wk. Class II verbs, on the other hand, have infinitives which always end in -ian, but do not have umlauted stem vowels, and the preterite suffix is always -od-. The third class of weak verbs contains only four verbs: habban 'to have', libban 'to live', secgan 'to say', and hycgan 'to think'.

5. The verb 'to be' in Old English. Among all the anomolous verbs in OE, the most necessary, and most anomolous is 'to be', owing to the fact that it reflects three different PIE roots: *es- 'to be', *bh+- 'to become', and *wes- 'to remain, dwell'. The forms from *es- and the forms from *bh+- are distinguished from one another in that the b- forms can have a sense of futurity to them.

22. Strong verbs

Verbs are known as "strong" which form their preterite tenses by means of a change in the stem-vowel, i.e. by "ablaut". Many of these changes still exist in modern English, reflected in verbs such as sing (past tense sang, past participle sung).

There are seven classes of strong verb in Old English, denoted on Wiktionary with Roman numerals. Each class has a different ablaut-series (though confusingly, there are three types of Class III).

Class I

о ? в ? i ? i eg scоnan, 1st pret scвn, pret pl scinon, past ppl scinen

Class II

зo ? зa ? u ? o eg ?зosan, 1st pret ?зas, pret pl curon, past ppl coren

Class III

IIIa: i ? a ? u ? u eg bindan, 1st pret band, pret pl bundon, past ppl bunden

IIIb: e/eo ? ea ? u ? o eg helpan, 1st pret healp, pret pl hulpon, past ppl holpen

IIIc: e ? ж ? u ? o eg bregdan, 1st pret brжgd, pret pl brugdon, past ppl brogden

Class IV

e ? ж ? ? ? o eg beran, 1st pret bжr, pret pl b?ron, past ppl boren

Class V

e ? ж ? ? ? e eg cweюan, 1st pret cwжю, pret pl cw?don, past ppl cweden

Class VI

a ? ф ? ф ? a eg standan, 1st pret stфd, pret pl stфdon, past ppl standen

Class VII

ea ? зo ? зo ? ea eg healdan, 1st pret hзold, pret pl hзoldon, past ppl healden

Weak verbs

Weak verbs are more predictable. They form their preterite tense by adding -de in the singular and -don in the plural. This is the root of the common English past-tense suffix -ed. Weak verbs are often formed from nouns, or are in general "newer" words.

There are three classes of weak verb, denoted on Wiktionary with Arabic numerals.

Class 1 are weak verbs have an infinitive ending in -an or -rian. Third-person singular present ends in -eю, and present plural ends in -aю.

Class 2 are weak verbs have an infinitive ending in -ian (except -rian, above). Their third-person present singular ending is -aю, like Class 1 plurals. Class 2 present plurals end in -iaю.

Class 3 are weak verbs are more unpredictable, and often combine features of the first two weak classes. There are four Class 3 verbs: habban, libban, secgan and hycgan.

23. OE Strong verbs

The majority of OE verbs fell into two great divisions: the strong verbs and the weak verbs. Besides these two main groups there were a few verbs which could be put together as “minor” groups. The main difference between the strong and weak verbs lay in the means of forming the principal parts, or “stems” of the verb. The strong verbs formed their stems by means of ablaut and by adding certain suffixes; in some verbs ablaut was accompanied by consonant interchanges. The strong verbs had four stems, as they distinguished two stems in the Past Tense - one for the 1st and 3rd p. sg Ind. Mood, the other - for the other Past tense forms, Ind. and Subj. the weak verbs derived their Past tense stem and the stem of Participle II from the Present tense stem with the help of the dental suffix -d- or -t-; normally they did not interchange their root vowel, but in some verbs suffixation was accompanied by a vowel interchange. Minor groups of verbs differed from the weak and strong verbs. Some of them combined certain features of the strong and weak verbs in a peculiar way (“preterite-present” verbs); others were suppletive or altogether anomalous.

Strong Verbs The strong verbs in OE are usually divided into seven classes. Classes from 1 to 6 use vowel gradation which goes back to the IE ablaut-series modified in different phonetic conditions in accordance with PG and Early OE sound changes. Class 7 includes reduplicating verbs, which originally built their past forms by means of repeating the root-morpheme; this doubled root gave rise to a specific kind of root-vowel interchange. The principal forms of all the strong verbs have the same endings irrespective of class: -an for the Infinitive, no ending in the Past sg stem, -on in the form of Past pl, -en for Participle II.

Strong verb indicate tense by a change in the quality of a vowel. They are original(germ. Europ). Restrictive group of verb. Oe - over 300Sv. 1 class -i class, a. 2 class-u-classu+root=diphthong,. Root consonant changed(rotasism). 3,4 class- the gradation was caused by consonant.(breaking), 6- qualitative-quantities ablaut 7 class -reduplication of the root-morpheme. They use form of conjugation known as ablaut. And this form of conjugation the stem of the word change to indicate the tense.

24. The origin of Modern English irregural verbs

Strong Verbs and their Development

As far as the strong verbs were a non-productive class, some strong verbs turned into weak with time, i.e. started to employ -t/-d suffix in their form-building (e.g. to climb, to help, to swallow, to wash, etc.). Thus in NE only 70 strong verbs out of 300 in OE remained.

The strong verbs were subdivided into 7 classes according to the type of vowel gradation/ablaut.

The classes that survived best through different periods of the history were classes 1, 3, 6:

Class 1	Infinitive	Past Sg	Past Pl	Participle 2
OE	wrоtan	wrвt	writon	writen
ME	writen	wrot	writen	writen
NE	write	wrote	written
Class 3	Infinitive	Past Sg	Past Pl	Participle 2
OE	findan	fand	fundon	funden
ME	finden	fand	founden	founden
NE	find	found	found
Class 6	Infinitive	Past Sg	Past Pl	Participle 2
OE	scacan	scoc	scфcon	scacen
ME	shaken	shook	shoken	shaken
NE	shake	shook	shaken

Analysing the tables above, we can see that the following changes occurred:

In ME the inflections -an, -on, -en were all reduced to just one inflection -en.

In NE the ending -n was lost in the Infinitive and preserved in the Participle 2 in order to distinguish these two forms.

In NE Past Singular and Past Plural forms were unified, usually with the Singular form preferred as a unified form because Past Plural and Participle 2 often had similar forms and it was hard to distinguish them (e.g. ME writen (Past Pl) - writen (Part. 2)) the category of Number disappeared in the Verb.

In ModE the subdivision into classes was lost though we still can trace some peculiarities of this or that class in the forms of the irregular verbs.

25. Weak verbs

Weak verbs are relatively stronger than strong verbs. They reflect a later stage in the development of the Germ.languages. There were an open class in OE as new verbs that entered the language generally formed their forms on analogie with the weak verbs. Whereas, the strong verbs used vowel interchange as means of differentiation among the principal verb tense, the weak verbs used for that purpose suffixation(suffixes -t,-d) : cзpan, cepte, cept. The weak verbs had a stem-forming suffix, that followed the root & the grammatical endings. In accordance of the character of the stem-suffix the weak verbs are classified into 3 classes:

The stem suffix “i”, the class includes many words from other nouns, adjectives and verbs. All of them have a front- root vowel - the result of the palatal mutation due to the “i” element of the stem suffix.( dфn-deman; ful-fyllan). In the cause of time this palatal suffix was lost. It was preserved only in some participles in the form of “e”: dзman, demd, demed.

The stem-suffix “oi”.The “o” element of the suffix is preserved in the past tense & in the Participle II. The root vowel of this class remained unchanged because of the preceding ф (lufo-ian) in all forms.

Only 3 verbs: -habban -have;-libban-live; seezan-say.

26. Grammatical categories of the English verb: growth of the future tense and continuous forms in English language

In the OE language there was no form of the future tense. The category of tense consisted of two members: past and present. The present tense could indicate both present and future actions, depending on the context. Alongside this form there existed other ways of presenting future happenings: modal phrases and the infinitive of the notional verb. In these phrases the meaning of futurity was combined with strong modal meanings of volition, obligation and possibility.

In ME the use of modal phrases, especially with the verb shall, became increasingly common. Shall + inf. was now the principal means of indicating future actions in any context. One of the early instances of shall with a weakened modal meaning is found in the early ME poem ORMULUM.

In late ME texts shall was used both as a modal verb and as a future tense auxiliary, though discrimination between them is not always possible. In the age of Shakespeare the phrases with shall and will, as well as the present tense of notional verbs occurred in free variation; they can express “pure” futurity and add different shades of modal meanings.

The development of aspect is linked up with the growth of the continuous forms. In the OE verb system there was no category of aspect; verbal prefixes especially зe-, which could express an aspective meaning of perfectivity in the opinion of most scholars, were primarily word-building prefixes. The growth of continuous forms was slow and uneven.

Verb phrases consisting of bзon (NE be) + Part.I are not infrequently found in OE prose. They denoted a quality, or a lasting state, characterizing the person or thing indicated by the subject of the sentence.

In early ME ben + Part.I fell into disuse; it occurs occasionally in some dialectal areas.

In the 15^th and 16^th c. be + Part.I was often confused with a synonymous phrase - be + the preposition on + a verbal noun.

It was not until the 18^th c. that the cont. forms acquired a specific meaning of their own; to use modern definitions, that of incomplete concrete process of limited duration. Only at the stage the cont. and non-cont. made up a new gram. category - aspect.

27. Minor groups of verbs in OE

Among them the most important group:

1) Preterite - present verbs.

Originally the Present Tense forms of these verbs were Past tense forms. Later these forms acquired a present meaning but preserved many formal features of the Past tense. Most of these verbs had new Past tense forms built with the help of the dental suffix. Some of them also acquired the forms of the verbals: Participles and infinitives. Most verbs didn't have a full paradigm and were in this sense “defective”.

The verbs were inflected in the Present like the Past tense of strong verbs: the forms of the 1^st and 3^rd person sing. Unlike strong verbs had the same root-vowel in all the persons; the plural had a different grade of ablaut similarly with strong verbs. In the Past the preterite-presents were inflected like weak verbs: the dentak suffix + the endings -e, -est,-e. In OE there were 12 preterite-present verbs. 6 of them have survived in modern E. (cunnun, sceal, mazan:ought, may, must). Most of the Preterite-presents did not indicate actions, but expressed a kind of attitude to an action, denoted by another verb-an infinitive which followed the preterit-present. They were used like modal verbs and eventually developed into modern modal verbs.

Among the verbs of the minor groups:

- anomalous verbs with irregular forms(willan - the meaning of volition and desire, indicated an attitude to an action and was often followed by an infinitive.

2 OE verbs were suppletive (OE zвn, bзon=be)

28. Grammatical categories of the English verb: growth of the passive voice and perfect forms in English language

In OE the finite verb had no category of voice.

The analytical passive forms developed from OE verb phrases consisting of OE bзon (NE be) and weorрan (become) and Part.II of transitive verbs.

OE bзon was used as a link-verb with a predicative expressed by Part.II to denote a state resulting from a preveous action, while the construction with OE weorрan “become” indicated the transition into the state expressed by the Part. The Part. in OE agreed with the subject in number and gender.

In ME ben + Past Part. developed into an analytical form. Now it could express not only a state but also an action.

The new passive forms had a regular means of indicating the doer of the action or the instrument with the help of which it was performed.

Late ME saw the appearance of new types of passive constructions. Passive forms began to be built from intransitive verbs associated with different kinds of objects. The passive voice continued to spread to new parts the verb paradigm: the gerund and the continuous forms.

The perfect forms have developed from OE verb phrases.

The main source of the perf. form was the OE “possessive” construction, consisting of the verb habban (NE have), a direct object and Part.II of a transitive verb, which served as an attribute to the object.

The Part. agreed with the noun-object in numver, gender, case.

Originally the verb habban was used only with Participles of transitive verbs; than it came to be used with verbs taking genitival, datival and prepositional objects and even with intransitive verbs, which shows that it was developing into a kind of auxiliary.

Towards ME the two verb phrases turned into analytical forms and made up a single set of forms termed “perfect”. The Participles had lost their forms of agreement with the noun. The Part. usually stood close to the verb have and was followed by the object which referred now to the analytical form as a whole - instead of being governed by have.

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