An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press
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snı¯
† an, where the only later alternation is that / e / has shifted to /d/, and the paradigm of c . e¯osan (II), where /z/ becomes /r/: c . e¯osan c . e¯as curon coren The alternation between f and v occurs in verbs such as drı¯fan, but it is obscured by the fact that the Old English spelling system does not use the symbol and / γ / are shown, with / γ / represented by of / γ / to /w/, may have been able to deduce, so that we find, for example: se¯on seah sa¯won sewen With the passage of time, almost all instances of Verner’s Law have been lost from English, with the exception of the alternation was ~ were and occasional idiomatic expressions lost and lorn, where the first of the pair shows loss of Verner’s Law, the second retention. Even in the Old English period there are clear signs that the alternation was on its way out. This is, for example, the case with the class I verb rı¯san ‘rise’ which always has the paradigm: rı¯san ra¯s rison risen Grammar books quite often give lists of verbs where Verner’s Law has been lost. These lists are usually quite short, but there are two reasons why this happens. Firstly, in the very frequent case of verbs with medial f, as we have seen, it is simply orthographically impossible to obtain evidence one way or the other. Secondly, as everywhere else in Old STRONG VERBS 63 02 pages 001-166 29/1/03 16:09 Page 63 English, we can only work with the evidence we have. That is to say, if no text shows loss of Verner’s Law in respect of a particular verb, all that this tells us is that there is no extant example of the loss, not that the loss never occurred. This is quite a subtle point, but the distinction is an important one, which should always be borne in mind when dealing with historical languages. 5.5 Modal verbs As I said at the beginning of this chapter, the present-day English category of modals sits only uncomfortably into Old English. This is perhaps particularly true in terms of morphology. Historically speaking, the verbs which we call ‘modals’ almost all belonged to a group which is called preterite-present verbs. Such verbs originally had a preterite or past tense morphology but this morphology had acquired a present tense meaning. If we take a typical such verb, cunnan ‘can, know’, then it is possible to observe that it has many of the features which would be normally associated with a class III verb such as singan. In particular it can be observed that forms such as cann ‘I know’ and cunnon ‘we know’ relate in form to the past tense forms sang and sungon respectively. Even in present-day English we find he can and this lacks the final inflectional -s which we expect to find with every 3rd person singular verb; the lack of final -s is something that today we still associate only with strong verb past tense forms, as in sang ‘he sang’. Because these preterite-present verbs had forms which were preterite in form but present in meaning, they had to find new past tense forms from somewhere. The solution to this was to form a new past tense using the dental suffix associated with the weak verbs, although in a somewhat altered, and not always well understood, formation. One obvious result of all this is that the preterite-present forms look rather irregular, both in their (new) present and past tense morphologies, and cannot easily be classified in a homogenous fashion. The other difficulty they present us with is the confusion which arises between morphological form and morphological content. Another way of putting this would be to describe this as the confusion between preterite- presents and modals, for the point is that not every preterite-present has modal features, and equally not every modal was a preterite-present verb. Add to this the fact that the modal category is not particularly robust in Old English, with some verbs showing modal syntactic features and others showing only semantic indications, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the situation is a mess. It has to be said, however, that much of the mess is of our own devising, and reflects the results of 64 AN INTRODUCTION TO OLD ENGLISH 02 pages 001-166 29/1/03 16:09 Page 64 attempting to use a nomenclature which can be shared between Old and present-day English. There is a judgement to be made about whether or not this is wise, and although the nomenclature does seem preferable, nevertheless a ‘health warning’ needs to be issued. The above having been said, we can list the following modal verbs: Yüklə 1,93 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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