An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press

particple -iende, for this is quite different from the present-day ending
-ing. In fact the origin of the present-day ending is somewhat muddy,
and it appears to be due to a coalescence of a variety of different
morphological and dialect forms, all brought together by the merger of
unstressed forms which is a significant feature of Middle English.
Moving on to the past tense forms, most of these should be quite trans-
parent, with the single exception of the past participle, where there is a
prefixed element g
.
e-. This prefix is not completely obligatory, but it
is present almost all of the time. Furthermore, it occurs equally when
the participle is used as an verbal adjective as well as in its more purely
verbal context. There has been much argument about the proper
nomenclature for the past participle, which here we can easily ignore.
Beyond noting that the past participle is part of the paradigm of every
verb (including be¯on/wesan with past participle g
.
ewesen), it should also be
observed that the prefix remains in use until about the time of Chaucer,
by which time it has been reduced to y-, as in yclept ‘called’.
4.3 More weak verbs
Let us turn our attention to weak class 1 verbs. Here there is a distinction
which needs to be observed between verbs with a short stem vowel and
a long one. Let me start off with an example of the former, trymman
‘strengthen’:
Present
Past
Indicative
1 Sing.
trymme
trymede
2 Sing.
trymest
trymedest
3 Sing.
tryme
e
trymede
Plural
trymma
e
trymedon
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AN INTRODUCTION TO OLD ENGLISH
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Subjunctive
Sing.
trymme
trymede
Plural
trymmen
trymedon
Imperative
2nd Sing.
tryme
_____
2nd Plural
trymma
e
_____
Participle
trymmende
g
.
etrymed
Much is similar here to class 2, but there are subtle differences, as in the
inflection of the 2nd and 3rd person singular. But the biggest difference
of all comes in the shape of the present tense as a whole. You should
have observed that sometimes there is a double consonant, sometimes
a single. This is no mere variation in spelling. I mentioned the contrast
between single and double, or geminate, consonants in Chapter 1, and
here we see a situation where the contrast is crucial. For example, it is
only that contrast which demonstrates the difference between 1 Sing.
indicative and the singular subjunctive, i.e. trymme ~ tryme.
Gemination plays a further role in the two conjugations I have
discussed so far. If you look more carefully at the two present tense
paradigms and compare them one by one, then you may notice some-
thing rather interesting. Everywhere that the class 1 verb has a geminate
consonant the corresponding class 2 verb has -i-, and everywhere that
the class 1 verb has only a single consonant the class 2 verb has no medial
-i-. The historical explanation of this is rather complex, but one of the
critical features is that the process of gemination must have been a sound
change which occurred at a pre-historic period in the development of
the language, but one which could not affect class 2 verbs.
Unlike class 2 verbs, the class 1 verbs show quite a lot of further
variation, but I shall delay my discussion of that until later. Instead let us
now turn our attention to class 1 verbs with heavy stem syllables. Below
I give the paradigm of de¯man ‘judge, deem’, a typical such verb: