Re: Methods of Question-Forming

--- Dan Jones <devobratus@...> wrote:
> Joe Fatula wrote:
> >  And it just occured to me that "would" doesn't
> >take an "s" today, either.  Interesting.
>
> That's because it's a past tense form, and you don't
> append endings to
> preterites, e.g. "thou loved", not "thou lovedest".

Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that.

In Old English, STRONG verbs had the ending -e in the
2nd Person Singular. It was added to the third
principle part of the verb (usually called the
preterite plural stem).

Thus:  helpan 'to help':
  ic healp       we  hulp-on
  thu hulp-e     ge  hulp-on
  he  healp      hi  hulp-on

However, in Old English, WEAK verbs had the ending
-est in the 2nd Person Singular. It was added to the
dental ending.

Thus:  cepan 'to keep':
   ic cept-e        we cept-on
   thu cept-est     ge cept-on
   he   cept-e      hi cept-on

----------------------------------------------------
In the Middle English Period, verbs took the endings:
PRESENT:
  1st -e
  2nd -est
  3rd -eth (-es in the North)
  Plural All: -e(n) (-es in North)

PAST:
  Weak:                          Strong:
   1st: -(e)                       -zero
   2nd: -est                       -zero (3 part)
   3rd: -(e)                       -zero
   Plural All: -(e)(n)             -e(n) (3 part)

----------------------------------------------------
In the Early Modern Period, verbs took the endings:
Present:
     1st: -zero
     2nd: -est, -'st, -st
     3rd: -eth, -th, -'th, -es, -s
     Plural: -zero, or occasionally -s (from North)

Past Of All Verbs:
   1st: -zero
   2nd: -est, -st, -'st
   3rd: -zero
   Plural: -zero

As the Late Middle English/Early Modern English period
of the sixteenth century came to a close, most verbs
lost the 2nd singular ending -est and thus the
preterite became invariable. However, some verbs, like
the words SHOULD, WOULD, COULD and BE still took some
ending in the past tense:

           E. Modern           Middle         Old
thou should'st, shouldst       sholdest      sceoldest
thou would'st, wouldst         woldest       woldest
thou could'st, couldst         coudest       cudest
thou were, wast, werst, wert    wast, were    waere

Elliott Lash









__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com