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Morphology of Verbs (Old English Verbs (Inflection (Loss of Inflection (By…

- - - - By 1600, only the 3rd-person -s remained
  - - - via ablaut (changes in the root vowel)
      - Older Germanic rule
  - - - via a dental suffix
        
        -d- after voiced phonemes (hæl-an, hæl-d-e)
        
        -t- after voiceless phonemes (cyssan, cys-t-e)
      - Newer, productive rule
      - -ed in Modern English
  - - - By 1600, -s was the norm
    - - In early ME, present and past tense still have distinct plural endings
        
        This distinction vanishes during the 13th century
      - By 1500, there are no more past tense plural endings, but there is still one for present tense (-en)
- - - - In OE, subjunctive mood was used e.g. to express indirect speech
        
        (suffixes: sg. –e, pl. –en)
      - During ME the subjunctive forms were affected by phonological attrition (weak vowels...) and finally vanished completely
      - The OE inflectional subjunctive gradually replaced by new, periphrastic constructions
        
        would = conditional marker
        
        wanted to = past tense of want
    - - Indicative: objective, factual report
      - Subjunctive: hypothetical context