The verbs in early Modern English
1. Verbs
The present tense. The second person singular inflection –est naturally declined in importance as the
use of thou declined, giving rise to the current arrangement whereby in the present tense only the third
singular is marked and all other persons take the base form.
At the start of the period, the normal third person singular ending in standard southern English was –
eth. The form -(e)s, originally from Northern dialect, replaced –eth in most kinds of use during the
seventeenth century. A few common short forms, chiefly doth, hath, continued often to be written, but
it seems likely that these were merely graphic conventions.
Forming the past tense and past participle. The class of ‘strong’ verbs (those which indicate tense by a
vowel change and do not have a dental segment added) included a number of verbs which are now
only ‘weak’
Examples:
creep
delve
help
melt
seethe
crope
dolve
holp
molt,
sod
cropen
dolven
holpen
molten
sodden
A few ‘weak’ verbs moved into the strong class during the period, including dig, spit, and stick.
The formation of the past tense and past participle of strong verbs showed more variation in early
modern English than today. There were a number of changes which began in Middle English and
whose results have now been fossilized in present English but which produced a variety of forms
in this period.
These were:
a. patterning the past tense on the past participle (as in tore after torn);
b. adapting the past tense or past participle to verbs with a diffeent pattern (as in slung after sung,
etc.);
c.
patterning
the
past
participle
on
the
past
tense
(as
in
sat)
d. dropping the –en suffix of the past participle (as in sung as opposed to ridden).
For example:
Write had the regular past tense wrote, but also found were writ (with the vowel of the past
participle) and wrate (patterned on gave or brake); the participle was written or writ (with loss of
–en) and wrote (based on the past tense) was also found.
Verbs like bear, break, spek, etc., regularly formed their past tenses with a (bare, brake, spake)
and this pattern was even extended to other verbs (wrate, drave).
Owing to the Great Vowel Shift these past forms lost their distinctiveness from the present stem
(since in a widespread variety of pronunciation, the long a of the past became identical with the
long open e of the present) and after 1600 forms with o from the past participle
(bore, broke, spoke) became normal.
Regular ‘weak’ verbs in Middle English formed their past tense and past participles in –ed,
pronounced as a separate syllable, as it still is in a few fossilized forms such as belovèd, blessèd.
During the sixteenth century the vowel was lost in this ending except where the preceding
consonant was t or d (e.g. in hated) and the d of the ending was devoiced to [t] after a voiceless
consonant (e.g. in locked as opposed to logged).
Present English spelling does not regularly show these three variants [id], [d], [t] but in early
modern English ‘phonetic’ spellings (’d, d, ’t, t) are quite often found. (This can lead to the
obscuration of other distinctions; for example, it is sometimes unclear whether rap’t represents
rapped or raped.)
There was an inherited class of verbs which end in a dental and do not add a dental ending to
show the past (e.g. cast, set).
This class was temporarily enlarged by the borrowing of Latin participles ending in –t used
initially as participles and past tenses,
e.g. ‘Moste playnly those thynges sem to be euydent, whiche of offyce and good maner be gyue
and precept of them’ (Robert Whittinton, 1534), ‘That the pain should be mitigate’ (1560). These
were subsequently used in other forms of the verb and developed regular past forms in –ed.
2. Strong Verbs are verbs in which the vowel in the stem is changed to indicate tenses.
Ring ==> Rang ==> Rung
Is an example of a strong verb in Modern English; the vowel changes from "i" to "a" to "u"
depending upon the verb tense.
Although they are not in themselves particularly difficult to understand, strong verbs can cause
problems for beginning Old English student translations because the form of a strong verb that
you find in a sentence is very often not the form of the verb listed in the dictionary.
For example, if you look up the word sungon in the dictionary, you will not find it (just as you
will not find “sung” in a Modern English dictionary). To find the meaning of sungon you must
convert the verb to its infinitive form, singan, which you can then easily find in the dictionary. In
order to translate strong verbs, then, we need to be able to recognize the patterns of vowel
changes and reconstruct the infinitive from whichever forms we find in sentences.
Conjugating Strong Verbs
To conjugate a Strong Verb you need to know four pieces of information:

The infinitive: translated as "to xxxx". "To read" is the infinitive in the sentence "Alfred
liked to read vernacular books." In Old English the infinitive will end with an.

The 3rd person singular in the past tense – for example, "rang" in the sentence:
"He rang the bell." [Many grammar books use the term preterite for past tense.]

The past tense plural -- for example, "sang" in the sentence "They sang the song" (it's
the same for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd persons).

The past participle -- for example, "tired" in "Alfred's tired eyes forced him to stop
reading."
There are seven classes of strong verbs. we can use the following poem to help place a verb in
its proper class:
The cat will bite the bird that will not fly
and spring upon the mouse when he comes by.
He gives no quarter and takes no guff.
A fool he holds him who falls for such stuff.
Taking the Modern English verbs from the poem in order gives us examples, in order, from the
seven Old English Strong Verb classes:
Class a
bite = bitan
Class b
fly = fleon
Class c
spring = springan
Class d
come = cuman
Class e
give = giefan
Class f
take = tacan
Class g
hold = healdan
In Early Modern English, four distinct singular endings remained: -st and -s/-th for the 2nd and
3rd person in the present tense as well as -d and -dst for the 1st/3rd and 2nd person in the past
tense. The –s-marking in 3rd person singular indicative was basically used in everyday spoken
language, while -th was more common in written language and the language of the court.
The morphology of verbs from Early Modern English does not vary much from the Modern
Standard English which we have nowadays. The markings for 2nd person singular in past and
present got lost so that today inflection concerning verbs actually only indicates tense and 3rd
person singular present tense.
The main changes that were common for both strong and weak verbs obviously occurred in
marking of person and number. From Old English to Modern English, the number of person
endings shrunk from nine over seven in Middle English and four in Early Modern English to
the 3rd person singular marking today. In the fifteenth century, two basic patterns existed in the
London standard language: the East Midland type and the Southern type.
East Midland type Southern type
1 -ø
1 -ø
2 -st
2 -st
3 -th/-s
3 -th
pl. -n/-s
pl.
It was also possible that in certain texts both types appeared in parallel. In the Southern type, -th
also existed for plural. Normally, 3rd person singular was indicated with –th, but in the East
Midland, also -s occurred. This marking was also normal in the Northern dialect, which actually
did not have much influence on the language of London and the South. Therefore it might be
surprising that later -s replaced -th completely. It seems as if -th still has been written long after
it was not said any more. “In Shakespeare, {-th} occurs mainly in verse, and {-s} nearly
invariably in prose – except for doth, hath which are common to both” (Lass 1999: 163).
3. Contractions involve joining two words together — using an apostrophe. They are commonly
used in informal written English and spoken English.
When forming a contraction with the verb 'to be', we can use the simple present tense of the verb.
Uncontracted
I am
You are
He/She/It is
We are
They are
Some examples:
Contracted
I'm
You're
He's/She's/It's
We're
They're

"I'm going to sit a writing exam at 2 o'clock on Thursday."

"You're invited to come over for dinner tomorrow night."

"He's currently attending a conversation class at his local library."

"We're going to the Blue Mountains this weekend."

"They're hoping to visit Perth sometime next year.
To create a negative statement, we use the adverb 'not' after the contraction.
Uncontracted
I am not
You are not
He/She/It is not
We are not
They are not
Contracted
I'm not
You're not
He's not/She's not/It's not
We're not
They're not
Examples:

"I'm not happy with the grade I received on my writing test.

"You're not going to believe what happened on the weekend!"

"He's not able to visit his sister because he's busy working two different jobs."

"We're not eating chocolate for the next month because we're trying to lose weight."

"They're not going to the party because they already made plans.