An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press
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cann ‘know’, dearr ‘dare’, mæg
. ‘be able’, mo¯t ‘can, must’, sc.eal ‘must’, † earfan ‘need’, wile ‘want’, but note that the last of these is not a preterite- present verb, although it shares many features with them. Note also that I have used as the citation form for these verbs the 3rd sing. present indicative rather than the infinitive. The reason for this is that two of these verbs, mo¯t and sc . eal, do not appear to have had infinitive forms. The others did, but where they did, the infinitive has been lost whenever the verb is modal in present-day English. The absence of an infinitive is, therefore, one of the incipient developments of the modal category. Similarly, all these verbs, with the exception of wile, are without present and past participle forms, and here too the comparison with present-day English is instructive. I give below, in a slightly summarised form, the paradigms of these verbs, from which it will be clear that there they are all somewhat irregular in comparison with most of the other verbs we have encoun- tered. In these summaries I give only present tense singular and plural and the past tense 1 sing., since the other forms are easily derivable from those paradigms: cann dearr mæg . mo¯t 1 Sing. cann dearr mæg . mo¯t 2 Sing. canst dearst meaht mo¯st 3 Sing. cann dearr mæg . mo¯t Plural cunnon durron magon mo¯ton Subj. Sing. cunne durre mæg . e mo¯te Past cu¯ e e dorste meahte mo¯ste sc . eal † earf wile 1 Sing. sc . eal t earf wille 2 Sing. sc . ealt t earft wilt 3 Sing. sc . eal t earf wile Plural sc . ulon t urfon willa e Subj. Sing. sc . yle t urfe wille Past sc . eolde t orfte wolde Clearly there are some unexpected forms there, such as the presence of i-mutation in the present subjunctive of, say, sc . yle, and its absence in † urfe, but in fact that is merely virtually free variation and exactly the STRONG VERBS 65 02 pages 001-166 29/1/03 16:09 Page 65 opposite forms can also be found. Note also that many forms of mæg ., especially in the past tense, are found with i-mutated variants, e.g. mihte alongside meahte. The infinitives, where they exist (see above), are as follows: cunnan, durran, magan, † urfan, willan. There still remains to discuss the few preterite-presents which do not have any modal values. Perhaps the most frequent of these, although, as a whole, most of the group are relatively frequent, is witan ‘know’ with 3rd singular wa¯t. The basics of its paradigm are as follows: 1 Sing. wa¯t 2 Sing. wa¯st 3 Sing. wa¯t Plural witon Subj. Sing. wite Past wita e Unlike most of the modals it has both a present and a past participle, namely witende and g . ewiten. The other preterite-presents have paradigms similar to parallel modals. Hence unnan ‘grant’ is like cunnan; like † urfan is g . emunan ‘remember’; a¯gan ‘own’, which might be included as a semi- modal, compare present-day English ought, and dugan ‘avail’ are parallel to mo¯t. Exercises The exercises in this chapter do not contain any text to translate, but instead I give two different exercises. The first of these is designed to help you to become familiar with strong verbs, since these undoubtedly form the most complex area of Old English morphology. 1. For each of the following verbs identify the strong verb class to which they belong and give their four principal parts: helpan ‘help’; brecan ‘break’; bre¯otan ‘break’; lu¯can ‘lock’; lı¯ ´ an ‘travel’, weor ´ an ‘become’; sle¯an ‘slay’. This chapter both marks the conclusion of detailed discussion of morphology, for in Chapter 6 I shall turn the discussion towards syntax, and it also marks the half-way point in the book. It is, therefore, a useful time to review the progress made so far. The following exercises are intended as one or two paragraph essays on the topics covered so far. 2. What are the principal features of Old English which distinguish it from that used today? 66 AN INTRODUCTION TO OLD ENGLISH 02 pages 001-166 29/1/03 16:09 Page 66 3. How many noun declensions were there in Old English? How many of these still exist, even if only minimally? 4. What are the principal differences between the different weak verb conjugations? 5. Examine in detail the variations possible within strong classes I–III. STRONG VERBS 67 02 pages 001-166 29/1/03 16:09 Page 67 6 Noun phrases and verb phrases 6.1 The elements of syntax If you were to review some of the sample passages of Old English which I have presented in most of the exercises at the end of each chapter, it would, I think, become clear that Old English syntax presents a mixture of the old and the new. That is to say, although quite often the syntax of Old English sentences bears a close relationship to what is found today, there is also a good deal which is wholly unfamiliar. This, of course, is only to be expected, given that the two stages of the language are a thou- sand years or more apart. In what follows I attempt to concentrate on the ‘old’ rather than the ‘new’, but I hope that this can be done without losing sight of the latter. Inevitably, given their concentration on morphology, the earlier chapters brought to the fore a number of issues which are substantially concerned with syntax. Examples of these include cases, adjective declension, and tense and mood. It therefore makes sense to start this Yüklə 1,93 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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