- •Contents
- •Unit 2: The Comparative Method ………………………..8 Unit 3: The First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law ………………………10
- •Unit 1 The Indo-European Family
- •Centum and Satem Groups of ie Languages
- •Unit 2 The Comparative Method
- •Unit 3 The First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law
- •Exceptions to Grimm’s law:
- •Unit 4 The Accent Shift and Verner’s Law
- •Rhotacism
- •The Palatal Mutation
- •Unit 6 The Early Germans
- •The Life and Social Organization of the Germans
- •The Great Migration
- •Unit 7 Ancient Germanic Tribes and Their Classification
- •The Proto-Germanic Language
- •Unit 8 The East Germanic Group The Goths
- •Ulfilas and the Gothic Bible
- •Unit 9 The North Germanic Group
- •Unit 10 Northern Mythology
- •The Joys of Valhalla
- •Thor and the Other Gods
- •The Death of Balder
- •Unit 11 The West Germanic Group
- •Unit 12 Old English
- •Three Periods of the History of English
- •Unit 13 Old English Alphabet and Pronunciation
- •Diphthongs
- •Consonants in Old English
- •Unit 14 Some Phonetic Changes of the Old English Period
- •Stressed Vowels
- •Oe Fracture, or Breaking
- •II. Unstressed Vowels
- •III. Consonants
- •Palatalization of Velar Consonants
- •Voicing and Unvoicing of Fricatives
- •Metathesis
- •IV. Word Stress
- •Unit 15 The Noun Grammatical Categories
- •Declensions
- •Unit 16 The Adjective
- •The Weak Declension
- •D. Other classes of pronouns
- •Unit 18 The Verb
- •Mutation or Umlaut
- •The Grammatical Forms and Categories of the Verb
- •Unit 19 Strong Verbs
- •Weak Verbs
- •To Class III belong only four verbs:
- •Preterite-Present Verbs
- •Irregular Verbs
- •Unit 20 The Middle English Period Early Middle English
- •Changes in the Orthographic System
- •Unit 21 Middle English Phonetic Changes
- •Consonants
- •Unstressed Vowels
- •Stressed Vowels
- •Quantitative Changes
- •Qualitative Changes
- •Monophthongs
- •New Diphthongs
- •Unit 22 Middle English Morphology Nouns
- •Articles
- •Pronouns
- •Adjectives
- •Unit 23 The Formation of the National English Language
- •The Great Vowel Shift (gvs)
- •Unit 25 The Mood
- •Conjugation of Strong Verbs
- •Conjugation of Weak Verbs
- •Unit 26 Development of the System of Verbids and Their Grammatical Categories
- •Unit 27 Syntactic Structure
- •Unit 28
- •Varieties of English
- •Unit 29 Etymological Composition of the English Vocabulary
- •Unit 30 The connection of the history of the English language with the history of the English people
Preterite-Present Verbs
Preterite-Present Verbs are a small group of common verbs, originally unreduplicated perfects, which have acquired a present meaning. Thus for instance ic wāt is in form a preterite, parallel with ić wrāt ‘I wrote’, but its meaning is ‘I know’ (Present). They differ in inflexion from ordinary strong verbs in 2 Sg., where the ending is –t or –st, not –e. Their preterite tenses are new weak formations, inflected like other weak preterites (hence they may be also called mixed verbs, being partly strong and partly weak).
The group of preterite-presents includes 12 verbs: witan (know), cunnan (can; know), dugan (be fit for, be of use to), magan (may, be able), munan (remember), sculan (shall), āgan (have), ðurfan (need), etc.
Some of these verbs did not have a full paradigm and were in this sense “defective” (dear(r), mōt, geneah). Most of them did not indicate actions, but expressed a kind of attitude to an action denoted by another verb. In other words, they were used like modal verbs. Six of them have survived in Modern English (owe/ought; can; dare; shall; may; must).
Paradigms of four of them will be given here: those of witan, magan, āgan, cunnan. But it must be remembered that even these are incompletely recorded.
witan ‘know’
-
Present
Preterite
Indicative
1/3 Sg.
wæt
wiste or
wisse
2 Sg.
wāst
wistest
wissest
1-3 Pl.
witon
wiston
wisson
Subjunctive
1-3 Sg.
wite
wiste
wisse
1-3 Pl.
witen
wisten
wisten
Imperative
2 Sg.
wite
2 Pl.
witaþ
Participles
wittende - witen
(gewiss, adj.)
The contracted negative forms are nāt (= ne wāt) nāst (= ne wāst), nyton (= ne witon), nyte (= ne wite), etc.
magan ‘be able’
-
Present
Preterite
Indicative
1/3 Sg.
mæg
meahte or
mihte
2 Sg.
meaht, miht
meahtest
mihtest
1-3 Pl.
magon
meahton
mihton
Subjunctive
1-3 Sg.
mæge
meahte
mihte
1-3 Pl.
mægen
meahten
mihten
Participle I
magende
Participle II -
āgan ‘have’
-
Present
Preterite
Indicative
1/3 Sg.
āh, āg
āhte
2 Sg.
āhst
āhtest
1-3 Pl.
āgon
āhton
Subjunctive
1-3 Sg.
āge
āhte
1-3 Pl.
āgen
āhten
Participles
āgende
āgen (only as adj.)
The contracted negative forms are nāh (= ne āh), nāhte (= ne āhte), nāge (= āge), etc.
cunnan ‘can; know’
-
Present
Preterite
Indicative
1/3 Sg.
cann
cūðe
2 Sg.
canst
cūðest
1-3 Pl.
cunnon
cūðon
Subjunctive
1-3 Sg.
cunne
cūðe
1-3 Pl.
cunnen
cūðen
Participle I
-
Participle II
cunnen; cūð (adj.)