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Infinitives, Participles and the Subjunctive

We have learned the indicative present and preterite (past) tenses of three verbs, the verbs beon, singan, and lufian, but if you look at the account of these verbs in the outline grammar, you will see that there remains more to be learned. The imperative is usually easy for students to understand and to learn, but infinitives, participles, and the subjunctive mood sometimes take a bit more work.

Infinitives

You will see in the tables for singan and lufian that Old English verbs have two "infinitives." These both correspond roughly to the "dictionary form" of Modern English verbs--to go, to be, to love, to sing, and so on. (The plain infinitive is, in fact, the dictionary form of verbs in Old English dictionaries.)

The "inflected infinitive" usually occurs in connection with nouns ("It's time to go" in Modern English), pronouns, adjectives ("I'm happy to say" in Modern English), and the verbs beon, habban, and agan, and is most frequently the form when the infinitive is the subject, complement, or object of a sentence.

The plain infinitive is used in a wide variety of other situations in Old English, which this lesson will not attempt to cover. One of the most important ones, however, is with various auxiliary verbs (what follows is not an exhaustive list):

God wolde . . . fandian Abrahames gehiersumnesse
God wanted . . . to test Abraham's obedience

Þin ofspring sceal agan hira feonda gatu.
Your offspring will own the gates of their enemies.

. . . swa feor swa he meahte . . . gesiglan
. . . as far as he could . . . sail

hie ne dorston forþ bi ære ea siglan
they did not dare to sail on past the river

Ond he ða heht his geferan toweorpan ealne þone herig & þa getimbro & forbærnan
And he then commanded his companions to cast down the whole sanctuary and the buildings and to burn them.

Participles

Old English has two participles, usually called, as in Modern English, the present participle and the past participle. The present participle has the characteristic ending -ende; the form of the past participle varies considerably depending on the class of the verb, but the past participle often takes the prefix ge-. Although there are some Old English uses of the participles that are not like Modern English, it is probably easiest for students to understand these verb forms by simply making the analogy between the Modern English -ing form of the verb and the Old English present partciple, and between the Modern English past participle and the Old English past participle:

Ic h�bbe sumne cnapan ywende oxan mid gadisene
I have a boy driving oxen with a goad.

Ealle niht ic stande ofer hie waciende for eofum
All night I stand over them watching for thieves.

wel sprecende ond yfele þencende
well speaking and evil thinking

Ne mette he nan gebun land . . .
He did not come across any settled land . . .

Se cyning ofslægen læg.
The king lay slain.

The Subjunctive

Old English has three verb "moods," the indicative, subjunctive, and imperative.

The imperative mood is used only for direct commands.

The indicative mood is the one most often used. By and large, it is used for situations when facts and reality, as opposed to guesses, wishes, or imagined situations, are the content of a sentence, though this is not invariably the case, and often purely conventional use of moods is the real explanation for a particular instance.

The subjunctive mood generally signals that the action or state specified by the verb is the object of a wish, a hope, or a fear, a command or request, a conjecture, belief or hypothesis, or is for some other reason unreal.

Forðy ic wolde ðætte hie ealneg æt ðære stowe wæren . . . .
Therefore I prefer that they always would be at that place.

Ond he . . . þone cyning bæd þæt he him wæpen sealde ond stodhors . . . .
And he . . . asked the king to give him (lit. that he give him--preterite subjunctive) weapons and a studhorse . . .

Ond for ðon ic ðe bebiode . . . ðæt ðu ðe ðissa woruldðinga . . . geæmetige . . .
And therefore I command you . . . that you free yourself from these worldly concerns . . .

. . . ic geliefe ðæt ðu wille . . .
. . . I believe that you will

. . . ond ic wene þætte noht monige begiondan Humbre næren.
. . . and I believe that there were not many beyond the Humber.

Swylc swa þu æt swæsendum sitte mid þinum ealdormannum . . . and sie fyr onæled and þin heall gewyrmed, and hit rine and sniwe and styrme ute . . . .
As if you were to sit at feasting with your nobles and a fire were to be kindled and your hall warmed, and it were to rain and snow and storm out . . . .


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Contact: Murray McGillivray at mmcgilli@acs.ucalgary.ca or the Listserv at mailto:eg401-m@acs.ucalgary.ca