An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press

part:
(42) Maria hæf
e
g
.
ecoren
t
æt betste dæ¯l
Mary has chosen the best part
There is one significant difference between the two stages of the
language, and at the same time we have to bear in mind the frequent use
in Old English of the simple past in constructions where we would
prefer the perfect or even the past perfect.
The difference I have in mind is that in Old English the perfective was
expressed by two constructions, the choice of which was determined by
the verb type. As in (42), one construction was formed by habban + past
participle, the other by be¯on + past participle, as can be seen in (43):
(43) Hı¯e wæ¯ron cumen Le¯oni
e
an to¯ fultume
They had come to help Leonidas
This variation in construction is one that will be familiar to anyone who
knows a language such as German, and it is based on the same principles,
namely that transitive verbs form the perfect with habban and intransitive
verbs use be¯on.
The perfective aspect seems to have had its origin in a construction
where habban had a full lexical, rather than grammatical, usage, with a
normal object, as in present-day:
(44) She has those letters
to which, as it were, a post-modifying participial adjective is attached,
giving a structure such as:
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(45) *She has those letters found
There is good evidence that this was a development underway during
the Old English period. A particularly good example is the following
from Ælfric:
(46) Fela Godes wundra we¯ habba
e
g
.
ehyred [
] and e¯ac
g
.
eswene [
 ]
Many wonders we have heard and also seen
In this sentence with a compound participial structure, the first par-
ticiple g
.
ehy¯red is uninflected, corresponding to the type She has found those
letters in present-day English, whilst the second participle is inflected,
like the type in (45). This variation between inflected and uninflected
forms can be seen as one sign of adjectival usage shifting to verbal
morphology. In Old English the majority of forms are already unin-
flected and this proportion seems to increase with the passage of time.
The intransitive forms with be¯on are largely parallel to the transitive
forms, except that the inflected participle is in the nominative, which
is predictable, and usually shows -Ø in the singular and -e in the plural.
Thus we find examples such as:
(47) hu¯ sı
¯
o la¯r lædeng
.
e
e
ı
¯
odes ær 
e
issum afeallen wæs
how the teaching of Latin by then had fallen away
Another example from the same text, Alfred’s Cura Pastoralis, exemplifies
a much less common use of the feminine inflection:
(48) Sw毠clæ¯ne hı
¯
o [
] wæs o
e
feallenu
so completely it was fallen away
It should be noted here that the presence or absence of inflection is not
the only, nor even necessarily safe, proof of the shift to verbal structure.
As I shall discuss in Chapter 7, another issue here is word order.
The rivalry between habban and be¯on which has eventually led to the
virtually complete loss of the latter type in present-day English was
already apparent in Old English. Thus it is possible to find examples
such as:
(49)
T
a¯ Scipia hæfde g
.
efaren to¯
e
æ¯re nı
¯
wan byrig
.
Cartaina
Then Scipio had travelled to the new city of Carthage
Turning now to the use of be¯on + present participle, there is no doubt
that the construction was used in Old English, sometimes quite
frequently. But if we look at the following two examples:
(50) eall middang
.
eard bi
e t
onne on dæg
.
byrnende
all the earth is then by day burning
NOUN PHRASES AND VERB PHRASES
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(51) hit God si
tt
an longsumlic
.
e wrecende wæs
it God afterwards for a long time avenging was
it should be clear that there are significant differences between the Old
English and present-day structures, for in (51) we use a simple past tense
today, i.e. God avenged it … There are other examples too where the Old
English construction cannot be easily moulded into the present-day one:
(52) Ond hı
¯
e
t
a¯ ymb 
t
a¯ gatu feohtende wæ¯ron o
t t
æt hı
¯
e
t
æ¯rinne
fulgon
And they then around the gates fighting were until they therein
burst
where the sense of the construction is ‘continued fighting until …’.
It is also clear that the simple present tense was often used for ex-
pressions where present-day English would use be + present participle:
(53)
e
e¯os worold is on ofste and hit ne¯alæ¯c
e t
a¯m ende
this world is in haste and it is approaching its end
A further alternative in past tense environments was to use wolde, the past
tense form of willan, in order to show habitual aspect, one of the features
of the present-day be + present participle construction:
(54) He¯ wolde æfter u¯htsange oftost hine g
.
ebiddan
He would, after matins, regularly pray
In summary, there are links between the Old English and present-day
constructions, but there are also substantial differences, which preclude
any real sense of identity.
6.6 Voice
With one exception, which I discuss below, Old English had no mor-
phological passive. Instead, much as in the present-day language, the
passive was often expressed periphrastically. Today the construction is