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’.