Table 15

Among the verbs of the minor groups there were several anomalous verbs with irregular forms.

OE willan was an irregular verb with the meaning of volition and desire; it resembled the preterite-presents in meaning and function, as it indicated an attitude to an action and was often followed by an Infinitive. Cf.:

Willan had a Past tense form wolde, built like sceolde, the Past tense of the preterite-present sculan, sceal. Eventually willan became a modal verb, like the surviving preterite-presents, and, together with sculan developed into an auxiliary (NE shall, will, should, would).

Some verbs combined the features of weak and strong verbs. OE dōn formed a weak Past tense with a vowel interchange: and a Parti­ciple in -n: dōn – dyde – ʒe-dōn (NE do). OE būan 'live' had a weak Past – būde and Participle II, ending in -n, ʒe-būn like a strong verb.

Two OE verbs were suppletive. OE ʒān, whose Past-tense was built from a different root: ; and bēon (NE be)

Bēon is an ancient (IE) suppletive verb. In many languages – Germanic and non-Germanic – its paradigm is made up of several roots. (Recall R быть, есть, Fr être, suis, fut.) In OE the Present tense forms were different modifications of the roots *wes- and *bhū-, 1st p. sg – eom, bēo, 2nd p. eart, bist, etc. The Past tense was built from the root *wes- on the pattern of strong verbs of Class 5. Though the Infinitive and Par­ticiple II do not occur in the texts, the set of forms can be reconstructed as: *wesan – wæs – wǽron – *weren.