Note 1 — Chapter III · Inflections.
Reading edition
Most grammars add a sixth case, the vocative. But it seems best to consider the vocative as only a function of the nominative form.
2. Of course our “apostrophe and s” (= ’s) comes from the Old English genitive ending -es. The e is preserved in Wednesday (= Old English Wōdnes dæg). But at a very early period it was thought that John’s book, for example, was a shortened form of John his book. Thus Addison (Spectator, No. 135) declares ’s a survival of his. How, then, would he explain the s of his? And how would he dispose of Mary’s book?
3. Early West Saxon had no distinctive form for the future. The present was used both as present proper and as future. Cf. Modern English “I go home tomorrow,” or “I am going home tomorrow” for “I shall go home tomorrow.”
4. The prefix ge- (Middle English y-), cognate with Latin co (con) and implying completeness of action, was not always used. It never occurs in the past participles of compound verbs: oþ-feallan, to fall off, past participle oþ-feallen (not oþ-gefeallen). Milton errs in prefixing it to a present participle:
“What needs my Shakespeare, for his honour’d bones, The labour of an age in piled stones? Or that his hallow’d reliques should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyramid.” —Epitaph on William Shakespeare.
And Shakespeare misuses it in “Y-ravished,” a preterit (Pericles III, Prologue l. 35).
It survives in the archaic y-clept (Old English ge-clypod, called). It appears as a in aware (Old English ge-wær), as e in enough (Old English ge-nōh), and as i in handiwork (Old English hand-ge-weorc).
5. With intransitive verbs denoting change of condition, the Old English auxiliary is usually some form of to be rather than to have. See § 139.
6. The theory that loved, for example, is a fused form of love-did has been generally given up. The dental ending was doubtless an Indo-Germanic suffix, which became completely specialized only in the Teutonic languages.