Seminar Verb in Old Roman and German languages

THEME 5. Verb in Old Roman and German languages

PLAN: Key words:

• The historical background of developing the system of verbs in Old German and Roman languages.
• The verb categories in Old Germanic languages. The verbal in Old Germanic languages.
• Infinitive and participle: their origin and morphological categories.

Grammatical categories of the noun stem building element, noun declension, strong declension, weak declension, verb, system of verbs, verb categories, verbals, finite and non-finite forms of verb, preterite, mood, voice, tense, strong and weak verbs.

1. The historical background of developing the system of verbs in Old German and Roman languages.

The verb system of OG languages consists of different elements. The main mass of verbs are strong verbs and weak verbs. Besides these two large groups, there are also the preterite-present verbs, with a peculiar system of forms, and a few irregular verbs, which do not belong to any of the preceding groups.

The verb system of OG languages consists of different elements. The main mass of verbs are strong verbs and weak verbs. Besides these two large groups, there are also the preterite-present verbs, with a peculiar system of forms, and a few irregular verbs, which do not belong to any of the preceding groups.

Several very important features characterize OE:

• 1) Old English was synthetic, or fusional, rather than analytic or isolating.
• 2) The noun, verb, adjective, determiner and pronoun were highly inflected. Consequently, word order was not as rigid as in Present-Day English.
• 3) There were weak and strong declensions of nouns and adjectives.

The verb categories in Old Germanic languages. The verbals in Old Germanic languages.

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During the Middle English period a number of very significant changes became more and more visible in the English language.

The major changes from Old to Middle English are the loss of inflections, and with it the development of more fixed word order.

In two or three columns

There are two voices in Germanic, active and passive or media-passive (only in Goth). For example, the Gothic verb bairan ―to carry‖.

When it is inflected actively, as in bairiþ ―(he) carries‖, the subject is seen as carrying something. When it is inflected passively, as in bairada ―(he) is carried‖.

The older Germanic languages really have only two tenses, namely present and preterite (past action or condition).

A picture is worth a thousand words

There are three non-finite forms of verbs.

Germanic verbs fall into two broad types

Weak (or consonantal) verbs
Strong (or vocalic) verbs

Examples in Old English:

fallan	feoll	feollon	(ge)fallen
hātan	hēt	hēton –	(ge)hāten
fallan	fiall	fiallun –	(gi)fallan
heizan	hiaz	hiazun –	(gi)heizan

Glossary

Compound words - are combinations of complete existing words to create a new word with a single meanings (e.g. skinhead, breakfast, earthquake, scarecrow, pickpocket).

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