Table 9

Infinitive rīsan
Present Tense	Past Tense
	Indicative	Subjunctive	Indicative	Subjunctive
singular	rīse		rās
rīsest	rīse	rise	rise
rīseþ		rās
plural	rīsaþ	rīsen	rison	risen
Participle I	rīsende	Participle II	(ge)risen
Imperative	Singular	rīs
plural	rīsaþ

The category of Mood was constituted by the Indicative, Imperative and Subjunctive. As seen from Table 9, there were a few homonymous forms which eliminated the distinction between the moods. The meanings of the Indicative and the Imperative Moods were about the same as they are now. But the Subjunctive in Old English differed greatly from the corresponding mood in New English. Subjunctive forms conveyed a very general meaning of unreality or supposition. There was only one mood form to express unreal actions in Old English whereas in New English we have two Subjunctive forms, those of Subjunctive I and Subjunctive II. Besides, in addition to its use in conditional sentences Subjunctive was common in other types of construction: in clauses of time, in clauses of result. Subjunctive forms were also used to present events in reported speech (nowadays the Indicative forms are proper in such cases, e.g.

He sæde þæt þæt land sie swiþe lang. – He said that that land is very long/large.

The category of Tense consisted of two forms: Present and Past. The tenses were formally distinguished by all the verbs in the Indicative and Subjunctive moods. The meanings of the tense forms were very general. The Past tense was used to denote various events in the past, including those which are nowadays expressed by the analytical forms of the Past Continuous, Past Simple, Past Perfect, Past Perfect Continuous, Present Perfect).

There was no Future Tense in OE, so future actions were commonly expressed by means of a present tense verb + an adverb or by the combination of the modal verbs sculan, willan + an Infinitive. The Future Tense was very seldom denoted by means of the prefix ʒe- (Gothic ga-). Evidently, there was the necessity for a better organized way of expressing the meanings of futurity.

All these prompted the appearance of various analytical formations in the verb paradigm. Firstly, they consisted of two verbs, the initial becoming a constant component of the combination conveying a certain modal meaning like that of existence, possession, etc. The second component was a verb of any lexical meaning. Gradually the first component was loosing its lexical meaning, changing the whole structure into an analytical one.

This was the common process of the analytical formations appearance including that of the Future Tense. Rather consistent were the combinations of the modal verbs and and the main verb, e.g.

· Þū scealt dēaþe sweltan

‘Ты смертью умрешь’.

· Nū sculon heriʒean heofon-rī weard

‘Теперь будем прославлять небесного царства хранителя’.

· If hwā þæs bōc awrītan wylle

‘Если кто эту книгу переписывать будет’.

· Wille ic asecʒan

‘Я скажу’.

Suppositions are made that similar was the way of developing the Future-in-the-Past forms with the verbs sceolde (scolde) and wolde. Such evolution is found in all the combinations changing into the analytical ones as the OE verb is characterized by the correlation of present and past tenses which is the oldest morphological formation showing time.

Future meanings in their content are always modal as they reflect the action which is not completed. The combinations with sceolde and wolde in OE could convey either future (if the context was in the Past Tense) or unreal, suppositional meaning. It is not always easy to find the difference but it is obvious that the OE context already had the elements to express supposition, e.g.

· Þa wearþ he afyrht þæt his rīce feallan scolde.

‘Тогда он испугался, что его царство падет’.

In this example we can observe the context to express supposition (‘he was afraid lest his reign should fall’).

· Me wæs uncūþ hwæt þām lician wolde.

‘Мне было неизвестно, тем (им) понравится ли’.

The example illustrates the context for Future-in-the-Past.

The most widely used analytical formation was the combination of the verb habban (‘to have’) with Participle II to denote a resultative action preceding a certain period of time, a certain moment. In this case we can as well witness the parallelism of present and past tense structures evolution. In OE such formations were characterized by the ability of Participle II to be combined with an object of the action and by the free word order, e.g.

Hīe hæfdon þæ heora stemn ʒesetenne.

‘Они имели тогда свою службу законченной’.

In OE the perfect combinations with an intransitive verb were built with the help of the verb bēon (wesan), e.g. ‘is nū mæl cumen’ (‘теперь время пришлo’). Suchlike formations were later generally ousted by habban + Participle II. Conclusive here is the statement that in OE perfective combinations cannot yet be distinguished as absolutely analytical ones as they were at the transitive stage of their formation.

The category of aspect in OE is also a debatable one. Until recently it was believed that it was expressed by the regular opposition of verbs with or without the prefix ʒe-: verbs with the prefix had a perfective meaning and the same verbs without it indicated a non-completed action. But some explorations show that this prefix could also change the lexical meaning of the word, so it cannot be regarded as an absolute marker of the aspective meaning, e.g.: OE sittan – ʒesittan ‘ sit – occupy ’, beran – ʒeberan ‘carry – bear a child’.

There were also other means of expressing aspective meanings in OE: verb phrases made up of the verb bēon and Participle I which were used to describe a prolonged state or action, e.g.

Ac se aʒlæca ahtende wæs.

‘Но то чудовище преследующим было (преследовало)’.

Se þe wiþ hine sprecende wæs.

‘Тот, кто с ним говорящим был (говорил)’.

Later this combination developed into the analytical form.

The category of voice in OE is also disputable. The combinations of Participle II and the verbs bēon (wesan) or weorþan (становиться) were gradually getting their passive meaning, e.g.

Æþelwulf wearþ ofslæʒen.

‘Этельвульф был убит’ (‘was slain’).

Fēt synt ʒebundenne.

‘Ноги связаны’ (‘feet are bound’).

Later weorþan dies out.

In OE there were two non-finite forms of the verb: the Infinitive and the Participle. In many respects they were closer to the nouns and adjectives than to the finite verb; their nominal features were far more obvious than their verbal features, especially at the morphological level. The verbal nature of the Infinitive and the Participle was revealed in some of their functions and in their syntactic combinability: like finite forms they could take direct objects and be modified by adverbs.

The Infinitive had no verbal grammatical categories. It was a verbal noun by origin and had a reduced case system: the Nominative and the Dative cases. Like the Dative case of nouns the inflected Infinitive with the preposition tō could be used to indicate the direction or purpose of the action, e.g.

Maniʒe cōmen tō bycʒenne þa þinʒ. –

Many (people) came to buy those things.

The uninflected Infinitive was used in verb phrases with modal verbs or other verbs of incomplete predication, e.g.

Hīe woldon hine forbærnan.

They wanted to burn him.

The Participle was a kind of verbal adjective which was characterized not only by nominal but also by certain verbal features. Present Participle was opposed to Past Participle through voice and tense distinctions: it was active and expressed present or simultaneous processes and qualities, while Participle II expressed states or qualities resulting from past action and was contrasted to Participle I as passive to active if the verb was transitive. Participle II of intransitive verbs had an active meaning; it indicated a past action and was opposed to Participle I only through tense.

The forms of the two participles were strictly differentiated. Participle I was formed from the Present Tense stem with the help of the suffix – ende. Participle II had a stem of its own: in strong verbs it was marked by a certain grade of the root vowel interchange and by the suffix – en; in weak verbs it ended in –d/-t. Participle II was commonly marked by the prefix ʒe-, though it could also occur without it, especially if the verb had other word building prefixes.