Tense and mood in OE While modern English distinguishes 3 tenses: present, past and future, OE had only 2 tenses: past and present.

Past tense expressed an action in the past without discriminating beteen priority or non-priority of an action or its connection with the present. In OE was equivalent to past simple, past perfect, past progressive and present perfect in ME.

Periphrastic tenses developed later, at the end of the OE and they were formed with 2 diffrenrt auxiliaries: BE or HAVE as in contemp german.

A late OE construction corresponding in structure to the pr perf, was sometimes employed for actions with no relation to the present.This tense looked like pr perf, but the meaning was that of past simple.

Another late OE construction consisting of hæʃde+ past part of the lexical vb, was employed for past action performed before another past action. This may be regarded as the beginning of the past perfect tense.

The past part did not have special endings in middle English, but earlier in the OE period, the past participle accompanying a noun was considered to be an adj. In OE all adj, functioning as attributes took special endings to indicate agreement in gender, number and case with the noun.

Past part accompanying nouns also had endings. Towards the end of the OE period, the endings attached to the past part disappeared and the past part was no longer interpreted as an adj, but as a vb.

The pr tense in OE expressed an action that took place in the present or in the future. (willan)

The future meaning: the vbs sculan and willan were used as lexical vbs in OE to express the idea of obligation(sculan) and intention (willan).

The OE Subjunctive mood which was widely used especially in subordinate clauses must have presented actions or events as unreal, probable or imaginary. In main clauses, the subjunctive expressed a wish or a command. In subordinate clauses it was used in indirect speech conveing the speaker’s uncertainty.

the subj was used after vbs of desire and command in main clause and in clauses of purspose introduced by –so that-, clauses of comparison introduced by –as if-, clauses of consession introduced by-though- and clauses of condition.

The infinitive. As in CE, in OE were two non finite verbal forms: infinitive and participle.

the infinitive consisted of the preposition “to”and a noun of verbal origin ending in –anne or –enne.

The participle was of 2 types: present and past. Pr Part was active in meaning, while past part was mainly used for the passive voice.

Participles used as adj could be declined as weak and strong having case, number and gender distinctions. This part were dependent on the noun they modified.