An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press

talu (see Chapter 2), has a final -u in the nominative because it is short-
stemmed, so too should a short-stemmed adjective have final -u. And that
is what we find. Thus trum ‘firm’ has nominative singular trumu. And simi-
larly, of course, in the nominative-accusative plural of the neuter, we also
find trumu.
There are other issues too, for example the variation I mentioned
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where words with the stem vowel æ, as in dæg
. and fæt equally affect adjec-
tives such as glæd ‘happy’, although sometimes in marginally different
ways. However, the material above is more than enough to allow you to
understand the basic paradigms and, particularly, the contrast between
the definite and indefinite declensions.
3.4 The verb ‘to be’
So far I have simply ignored verb forms. I shall more fully repair this
omission in the next two chapters, but by way of introduction I want here
to look at parts of the paradigm of the verb ‘to be’. There is a particular
problem with this verb, of course, as there is in present-day English,
which is that it is highly irregular. Compare with be a verb such as love
with its past tense loved. However, the verb’s irregularity is connected to
another feature, namely its frequency. If you know any other languages
than English, then it is almost certain that the same situation arises there
too. I have already discussed the general issue of frequency earlier in this
chapter, and therefore you should not be surprised or dismayed by the
fact that the verb ‘to be’ is equally irregular in Old English. It is, if you
like, a sign of the ‘normality’ of Old English.
The infinitive form of ‘to be’ in Old English is be¯on, or (see further
below) wesan, and the present tense indicative forms are as below. Note,
however, that there are two parallel indicative paradigms. I shall explain
these below:
Present
1 Sing.
eom
be¯o
2 Sing.
eart
bist
3 Sing.
is
bi
e
Pl.
sindon
be¯o
e
Let me deal firstly with the ‘double’ paradigm. The first point to make is
that both paradigms remained in existence until at least towards the end
of the twentieth century, and indeed may still appear alongside each
other. Many of you will have heard the usually fake ‘Zummerzet’ speech
of south-west England, with forms such as I be, he be etc. These are relics
of the second paradigm above. But everywhere else the first paradigm
ousted the second, except, of course, in the infinitive, where be¯on is today
the only infinitive form. I shall explain the latter below.
The obvious question to ask about the above double paradigm is
whether they represented, somehow, different meanings. The answer to
that is in the affirmative, although the shades of meaning can merge
together so that it is not always rigidly maintained. But we can say that
MORE NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES
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the usual sense of the eom paradigm is to express a present state; be¯o, on
the other hand, is mostly used to express futurity or a timeless (generic)
state.
In other respects the above paradigms are probably reasonably access-
ible. This is certainly true of the singular of the eom paradigm. There
are, however, problems in the plural, where sindon is likely to be quite
unfamiliar. It is, in fact, similar to forms in closely related languages such
as Dutch zijn and German sind. The odd one out, as it were, is in fact
present-day English are. There are, it has to be admitted, examples in
Old English of aron ‘they are’ in northern and north-Midlands texts, but
the interesting feature of these is that the form is not a native English
one, but rather is due to Scandinavian influence.
This is indeed remarkable. When a language takes forms from another
language, it is almost always the case that the borrowed or loan words
are nouns, adjectives or verbs with full semantic meaning. This group of
words is called content words, because of their semantic content.
Opposed to these are function words, which have grammatical meaning
rather than semantic or lexical meaning. Such words are rarely bor-
rowed. I shall return to such questions of vocabulary in Chapter 8, but it
does need to be noted that aron is an example of a function loan word.
The usual word sindon has other points which have to be addressed.
Note especially that it is subject to considerable variation. Thus along-
side sindon we find a short (and more original) form sind. Furthermore, as
we have seen elsewhere, alternates with . And of course this is
also true in is, where ys is common.
The paradigm of be¯o is more straightforward, although, of course, bist
will alternate with byst, although the latter is not so common. Otherwise
it turns out that be¯o is much more like ‘normal’ Old English verbs in its
inflection, and therefore I shall postpone that discussion until Chapter 4.
The past indicative forms of ‘to be’ are very similar to the possibilities
in present-day English, and it takes its forms from the alternative infini-
tive wesan:
Past
1 Sing.
wæs
2 Sing.
wæ¯re
3 Sing.
wæs
Pl.
wæ¯ron
The past tense is often described as the preterite in grammar books, but
here I shall stick with the more common usage in present-day English,
namely ‘past’. Sometimes we find was rather than wæs but otherwise there
is nothing of importance to note there.
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One feature which is much more common in Old English than in
present-day English is the use of special subjunctive forms. I shall
attempt to explain the usage of the subjunctive in later chapters, but
since it is so common, it is worth seeing the forms now:
Subjunctive
Present
Past
Sing.
sy¯
be¯o
wæ¯re
Pl.
sy¯n
be¯on
wæ¯ren
As can be seen, there is no distinction between the 1st, 2nd and 3rd
persons, even in the singular. These special subjunctive forms are
perhaps not quite as unusual as they might first appear to be, since you
should already be familiar with present-day English phrases such as If I
were you…
Finally, there are some further inflectional forms which correspond
to forms also found today. There is both a present participle and a past