Old English Online

Lesson Text

Translation

Grammar

26 The Anomalous Verb gān

The text in lesson 2 introduced the suppletive 3rd person singular preterite indicative form ēode of the anomalous verb gān 'go, walk, move', also found in this lesson text. (Contrast with the modern English go, went, where the preterite form was borrowed from that of the verb wend, went.) The text in lesson 3 added the plural ēodon. These and other forms are reflected in the following table:

gān 'go'		Indicative		Subjunctive		Imperative
1 Sg. Pres.		gā		gā
2 Sg. Pres.		gǣst		gā		gā
3 Sg. Pres.		gǣð		gā
Pl. Pres.		gāð		gān		gāð
1 Sg. Pret.		ēode		ēode
2 Sg. Pret.		ēodest		ēode
3 Sg. Pret.		ēode		ēode
Pl. Pret.		ēodon		ēoden

The present participle was gangende (or gānde) and the past participle was gegān (with ge- optional: see §29 below). Of course, spelling differences might replace eth ð with thorn þ in present indicative and imperative forms.

27 Old English, a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language

The basic word order of Old English, a.k.a. Anglo-Saxon, came to have the subject in first position and the verb in the second position. The order is not as consistent as in modern English, however, but is often modified for reasons of emphasis. The structure is clearest in prose, but also observed in verse when the poet does not modify it for emphasizing elements or in keeping with metrical requirements. In Beowulf line 5 (lesson 1), for example, the verb oftēah is final in the verse because of the meter, but in line 6 egsode precedes the object in accordance with the basic order.

The order is more closely maintained in the less rigorous verse of Caedmon in lesson 2, as in his first sentence (line 41), Nū wē sculan herian heofonrīces Weard 'Now we shall praise the Lord of heaven', and in much of Bede's preceding prose, as in line 21 and following with the sequences hē wæs 'he was', hē for 'he went', hē geseah 'he saw', but modified for the sake of emphasis in the first two words of the passage and later as well. From other evidence it is clear that, earlier in time, the verb was placed last in the sentence as in the first three lines of Beowulf, but that the order was not as strict as in modern English.

28 Word Order in Clauses with Compound Verbs

Compound verbs made up of auxiliaries and participles generally place the participle last in the clause, as in Beowulf 12 wæs æfter cenned 'was then born' and in line 20 of Bede's account (in lesson 2) Wæs... geseted 'was... appointed'. This order is also generally observed for infinitives introduced by other auxiliaries, as in line 20 of Beowulf sceal... gewyrcean 'should... accomplish' and in passages such as line 23 of Bede's account Ne con ic nōht singan 'I can not sing', though not in line 41 cited above. As in simple clauses, the order is more free than in modern English. Several clauses in our lesson text, poetry though it be, bear this out.

29 The Prefix ge- Indicating Completed Action

The prefix ge- is used with verbs in the past tense to indicate completed action in contrast with continuing action. In the passage in lesson 2, for example, geleornade 'learned' implies 'had acquired mastery' [though of course negated in that passage by other words], as opposed to the prefix for- in forlēt which indicates an ongoing process. Other forms with ge- may be examined in the same way for their implication, such as geseah, gesette, gewāt, and gesceōp in lesson 2, and numerous examples in other lesson texts; it has the same implication when used with the past participle, e.g. gegremode in the second line of our text.

30 Noun Inflection

Noun inflection is used to signal case and number. Six cases are reconstructed for Proto-Germanic (PGmc): nominative, vocative, genitive, dative, accusative, and instrumental. In Old English, the first two forms had merged into one, as had dative and instrumental for nouns; for that matter, many OE nouns had a single form for nominative and accusative, meaning there were but three distinct forms in the singular and three in the plural. This is an unmistakable sign that word order was becoming an increasingly important component of syntax, which trend continued into the modern English period. The OE cases and their basic uses are:

• Nominative, the case of the subject and the predicate noun;
• Accusative, the case of the direct object, also following prepositions that indicate direction or movement;
• Genitive, the case indicating possession and relationship;
• Dative, the case of the indirect object, also following certain prepositions that indicate place or agent;
• Instrumental (not distinguished from dative among nouns), the case indicating means of action.

In Indo-European languages, noun inflection is effected through suffixes known as endings. In Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and early PGmc, endings were attached directly to roots. But affixes were added to roots already in late PIE to form bases, also known as stems, and endings were then attached to these stems. When a stress accent evolved in PGmc, it generally fell on the root; weakly stressed syllables (affixes and endings) were then often reduced. However, the declension classes in late PGmc and, accordingly, OE are labelled based on the earlier stems. These fall into 3 broad categories:

1. root nouns (few members);
2. vocalic stems (most common);
3. consonant stems.

Nouns are assigned to specific declension classes on the basis of their PGmc stem affixes (as in categories 2 and 3 above) or lack thereof (as in category 1) because these left traces -- if not always obvious to the student -- in Old English. Gender may have an effect on the stem affixes, and therefore on inflection: nouns are not inflected to show gender, but rather are inflected based [in part] on it. Declension classes may be strongly, even exclusively, associated with gender. We list, here, three examples of common noun inflections; elaboration of declension classes will follow in subsequent lessons.

Case		Masc. Sg.		Masc. Pl.		Fem. Sg.		Fem. Pl.		Neut. Sg.		Neut. Pl.
Nom/Acc.		eorl 'earl'		eorlas		lufu 'love'		lufu		word 'word'		word
Gen.		eorles		eorla		lufe		lufa		wordes		worda
Dat/Inst.		eorle		eorlum		lufe		lufum		worde		wordum

Because OE instrumental case forms of nouns (though not yet of pronouns and adjectives) had merged with the datives, so that those forms were the same, the instrumental case forms of nouns are not elaborated in our grammar. But while OE accusative noun forms were merging with the nominatives, there were yet some differences; therefore, accusative forms are listed, even though they are often the same as the nominative forms.

previous lesson   |   next lesson