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    Full name: ELHAOUZI Roqaya

    Master: Linguistics & Advanced English Studies


    Module: Old English
    Supervised by: Pr. Abdellah Elhaloui

    Report of “Beginning Old English” book from pages 81 to 93


    This report covers the topics discussed from pages 81 to 93 of “The Beginning of Old
    English” book by Carole Hough and John Corbett. To begin with, it is stated that the verb ‘to
    be’ is originally derived from two Old English verbs, which are wesan and beōn. The second
    form, beōn, in today’s English, is only found in the infinitive ‘to be’ while all of the other
    forms of today’s ‘verb to be’ come from wesan. However, there is a possibility that in Old
    English wesan and beōn had slightly different meanings. One is referring to the present
    while the other was used to refer to ‘timeless facts’. For example, sentences like ‘I be the
    king’s huntsman’ express timeless facts. It is like saying in today’s English ‘I am the king’s
    huntsman’. Using wesan and beōn with present participle to show duration was not
    common in Old English. Therefore, phrases like feohtende wǣron (were fighting) would be
    translated to ‘continued fighting’.

    Furthermore, we explore how the present-day English system is an extension of the


    Old English system which is similar but not identical to the one we have today. Present-day
    English uses combinations made up of the verb ‘to have’ to indicate specific references to
    time as in ‘He has fought’ and ‘He had fought’. The meaning is determined depending on the
    verb used and the context in which it is used, for it can indicate up to three meanings. Now,
    we see how was the case in Old English as far as the verb ‘to have’ is concerned. Old English
    used a set of combinations with both habban and beōn. Habban was used in sentences in
    which the verb is associated with an Object while beōn was used the verb is not associated
    with an Object. For instance, in this sentence ‘hē hæfþ þone fēond gefeohtan’(he has fought
    the enemy), habban is used because the verb ‘gefeohtan’ has an object which is ‘þone
    fēond’ (the enemy). However, sometimes Old English writers would use simple present-
    tense forms in sentences that express duration. The book also provides a poem called The
    Dream of the Rood to show the first-person narrative in which the speaker is an actor in his
    own story. In this poem, the narration switches from the first person to the third person and
    vice versa.

    One of the features of Old English is the tendency to separate plural subjects and to
    give them a singular verb. In today’s English, we would say something like ‘Beowulf and his
    comrades’, but in Old English, it would be more like, ‘Beowulf laid his head on the pillow,
    and his comrades likewise’. Asking questions in Old English, moreover, is similar but easier
    than Modern English in the sense that in yes/no questions the order of subject and verb is
    simply reversed without adding the auxiliary verb ‘do’. Also, Old English used ne and nā to
    form negative sentences. Sometimes, both of them could be used in one sentence to stress
    the negative meaning, and ne can be attached to some verbs to form a single word. As for
    commands, Old English commands can be either for an individual, as in the verb form gā, or
    for a group, as in gāþ. In Old English, there are so many verbs that have impersonal uses in
    which there is no animate subject, especially verbs expressing mental events or perceptions.
    Finally, the passive voice in Old English is constructed in a similar way to today’s English as in
    ‘Peohtas wǣron gefullode’.

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