2015-05-18
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Pre-Old Germanic: Continuous Momentaneous Resultative
a new stage
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Old Germanic: Pr. T. Past T. Pr.T.
The Preterite-Present verbs originated from the so-called resultative aspect. It is believed that in the Pre-Old Germanic languages the distinction was not between tenses but between aspects, which show the way the action is developing.
There used to be 3 aspects: the continuous, momentaneous & resultative. The Continuous aspect presents actions as developing in time, without reference to any completion.
The Momentaneous aspect presents the action as heading towardscompletion.
The Resultative aspect presents the action as completed and having brought about a new stage of things.
From these 3 aspects the Tenses of Germanic strong verbs were developed. The Continuous aspect yielded (произвел, дал плоды) the Present Tense.
The Momentaneous aspect yielded the Past Tense.
The Resultative aspect developed in 2 directions: 1) it joined the momentaneous aspect; 2) it gave rise to the preterite-present verbs to form their Present Tense.
Preterite-present verbs signify the present result of a past action. In some verbs the Present Tense meaning derived from the resultative aspect can be well seen: the meaning “know” (знаю) develops from a meaning “have learnt” (узнал); the meaning “can” (могу) from a meaning “have learnt”(научился), managed (смог). Most of the preterite-present verbs did not indicate actions, but expressed a kind of attitude to an action denoted by another verb in the Infinitive. In other words, they were used like modal verbs, and 6 of them eventually developed into modern modal verbs – NE ought, dare, shall, can, may, must.
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Suppletive verbs bēon, wesan; ʒān
Suppletive verbs are verbs whose paradigm is made up of several roots. In other words suppletive verbs build up different forms from different roots. E.g. I am, he was; Я хожу, он шел.
Supplition is one of the oldest means of form-building. All IE languages have suppletive verbs: Germ.: sein – war – ich bin;Rus.: быть, есть; Fr.: aller – je vais.
In OE there were two suppletive verbs: ʒān and bēon,wesan.
The verb ʒān built its Past from a different root – eode.
ʒān – eode – ʒe-ʒān
The forms of the verb “be ” are derived from three roots: wes-, es-, and be-.
The Past forms were built from the root wes- on the pattern of strong verbs of Class 5.
wesan – wæs – wæron – Ø
The present tense forms were different modifications of the root es- and be- (IE wes- and bhu-)
Sg. 1p. eom, bēo Pl. sind(on), bēoþ, sīen, sīn, syn, bēon, sint.
2p. eart, bist
3p. is, biþ
Anomalous verbs willan, dōn
Anomalous verbs are verbs with irregular forms: willan, dōn, būan. They have some individual peculiarities.
Willan with the meaning of volition, desire resembles the preterite-present verbs in meaning and function as it indicates an attitude to an action and it was often followed by an Inf. The form of the Past T. wolde is similar to the Past T scolde of the prêt.-pres. verb sculan. Eventually, on analogy with prêt.-pres. verbs it developed into a modal verb and later together with sculan – into an auxiliary verb.
The verb dōn combined the features of weak and strong verbs.
dōn – dyde – ʒe-dōn
Like weak verbs it formed its Past tense with the help of a dental suffix (d) and had a vowel interchange (ō–y) and – n in Part. 2, which is characteristic of strong verbs.
