Conjugation of preterite-presents in Old English

Infinitive	cunnan ‘can’	sculan ‘shall, should’
Present tense
Indicative Singular 1st 2nd	cann canst	sceal(l) scealt
3rd	cann	sceal(l)
Plural	cunnon	sculon
Subjunctive Singular Plural	cunne cunnen	scule, scyle sculen, scylen
Participle I	—
Past tense
Indicative
Singular 1st	cūðe	sceolde
2nd	cūðest	sceoldest
3rd	cūðe	sceolde
Plural	cūðon	sceoldon
Subjunctive
Singular	cūðe	sceolde
Plural	cūðen	sceolden
Participle II	cunnen, cūð	—

Among the verbs of the minor groups there were several anomalous verbs with irregular forms.

OE willan was an irregular verb with the meaning of volition and desire; it resembled the preterite-presents in meaning and function, as it indicated an attitude to an action and was often followed by an infinitive. Cf.: 'þā ðe willað mīnes forsīðes fænian 'those who wish to rejoice in my death'.

Willan had a past tense form wolde, built like sceolde, the past tense of the preterite-present sculan, sceal. Eventually willan became a modal verb, like the surviving preterite-presents, and, together with sculan developed into an auxiliary (Mod E shall, will, should, would).

Some verbs combined the features of weak and strong verbs. OE dōn formed a weak Past tense with a vowel interchange and a Participle in -n: dōn – dyde – e-dōn ‘do’. OE būan 'live' had a weak past būde and participle II, ending in -n, e-būn like a strong verb.

Two OE verbs were suppletive: OE ān, whose past tense was built from a different root: ān – eōde – e-ān ‘go’, and bēon ‘be’.

Bēon is an ancient (IE) suppletive verb. In many languages – Germanic and non-Germanic – its paradigm is made up of several roots. (Recall Ukr бути, R быть, есть, Fr être, suis, fut). In OE the present tense forms were different modifications of the roots *wes- and *bhū, 1^st p. sg – eom, bēo, 2^nd p. eart, bist, etc. The past tense was built from the root *wes- on the pattern of strong verbs of Class 5. Though the infinitive and participle II do not occur in the texts, the set of forms can be reconstructed as: *wesan – wæs – wǽron – weren.

Table 4.6