1. The verb
The verb-predicate agreed with the subject of the sentence in two grammatical categories: number and person. Specifically verbal categories were mood and tense.

2. GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES
The category of Person
The category of Number
The category of Mood
The category of Tense
Debatable categories:
The category of Aspect
The category of Voice

3. THE CATEGORY OF PERSON
The category of Person was made up of 3 forms: the 1st, the 2nd and the 3d. Unlike number, person distinctions were neutralized in many positions. Person was consistently shown only in the Pres. Tense of the Ind. Mood sg. Person was not distinguished in the plural, nor was it shown in the Subjunctive Mood.

4. THE CATEGORY OF MOOD
The category of Mood was constituted by the Indicative, Imperative and Subjunctive.
The use of Subjunctive Mood in OE was different from its use in later ages. Subjunctive forms conveyed a very general meaning of unreality or supposition. In addition to its use in conditional sentences Subjunctive was common in clauses of time, result, and in clauses presenting reported speech.

5. THE CATEGORY OF TENSE
The category of Tense consisted of 2 categorial forms, Present and Past.
The forms of the Present were used to indicate present and future actions. Future actions could also be expressed by verb phrases with modal verbs.
The Past tense was used to indicate various events in the past (including those which are nowadays expressed by the forms of the Past Cont, Past Perfect, Pr. Perf and other analytical forms).

6. THE CATEGORY OF ASPECT
Until recently it was believed that in OE the category of Aspect was expressed by the regular contrast of verbs with and without the prefix 3e-; verbs with prefix had a perfecteve meaning while the same verbs without the prefix indicated a non- completed action, e.g.
OE lician (подобатися) – 3elician (сподобатися)

7. THE CATEGORY OF ASPECT
In some recent explorations it has been shown that the prefix 3e- in OE can hardly be regarded as a marker of aspect, it could change the aspective meaning of the verb by making it perfective, but it could also change its lexical meaning, e.g.
OE beran (‘carry’) – 3eberan (‘bear a child’)
It follows that the prefix 3e- should be regarded as an element of word-building with certain shades of aspective meaning.

8. THE CATEGORY OF ASPECT
In OE texts there were also other means of expressing aspective meanings:
Verb phrases = habban (‘have’), bēon (‘be’), weorðan (‘become’) + the Past or Pr. Part.
the phrases with Part I were used to describe a prolonged state or action, the phrases with Part. II indicated a state resulting from a previous, completed action.

9. THE CATEGORY OF VOICE
In OE texts we find a few isolated relics of synthetic Mediopassive forms:
e.g. in Þā ēa hātte Araxis – ‘the river that is called Arax’
The passive meaning was frequently indicated with the help of Part II of transitive verbs used as predicatives with the verbs bēon and weorðan. During the OE period these constructions were gradually transformed into the analytical forms of the Passive Voice.

10. GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES OF THE VERBALS
In OE there were 2 non-finite forms of the verb: the Infinitive and the Participle. They were closer to the nouns and adjectives that to the finite verb. Their nominal features were obvious at the morphological level. The verbal nature of the Inf. And the Part. was revealed at the syntactical level: like finite forms they could take direct objects and be modified by adverbs.

11. THE INFINITE
The Infinitive had no verbal grammatical categories. Being a verbal noun by origin, it had a sort of reduced case-system: two forms roughly corresponded to the Nom. and the Dat. cases of nouns, e.g.
Beran – uninflected Infinitive (Nom. case)
To berenne or to beranne – inflected Infinitive (Dat. case)

12. THE INFINITIVE
Like the Dat. case of nouns the inflected infinitive with the preposition tō could be used to indicate the direction or purpose of an action, e.g.
Mani3e cōmen tō byc3enne Þa Þin3 – ‘many (people) came to buy those things’
The uninflected Inf. was used in verb phrases with modal verbs, e.g.
Þū meaht sin3an – ‘ you can sing’

13. THE PARTICIPLE
The participle was a kind of verbal adjective which was characterized not only by nominal but also by certain verbal features. Participle I (Pr. Part.) was opposed to Participle II (Past Part.) through voice and tense distinctions: it was active and expressed present or simultaneous processes and qualities, while Part. II expressed states and qualities resulting from past action and was contrasted to Part I as passive to active, if the verb was transitive.

14. THE PARTICIPLE
Participle II of intransitive verbs had an active meaning; it indicated a past action and was opposed to Part I only through tense.
The forms of the two participles were strictly differentiated. Part I was formed form the the Present tense stem (=the Inf without the ending –an, -ian) + suffix – ende.

15. THE PARTICIPLE
Part II had a stem of its own – in strong verbs it was marked by a certain grade of the root- vowel interchange and by the suffix – en; with weak verbs it ended in –d/t. Part II was marked by prefix 3e-, though it could also occur without it, especially if a verb had other word-building prefixes.
Bindan (Inf) - bindende (Part I) – 3e-bunden (Part II)

16. THE PARTICIPLE
Participles were employed predicatively and attributively like adjectives and shared their grammatical categories: they were declined as weak and strong and agreed with nouns in number, gender and case. Sometimes, however, they remained uninflected.

17. MORPHOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION OF VERBS
The majority of OE verbs fell into 2 divisions: the strong verbs and the weak verbs. Besides these 2 groups there were a few verbs which could be put together as ‘minor’ groups (preterite-present, suppletive, anomalous)
The main difference between the strong and weak verbs lay in the means of forming the principal parts, or the stems of the verb.

18. THE STRONG VERBS
The strong verbs formed their stems by means of vowel gradation (ablaut) and by adding certain suffixes. In some verbs vowel gradation was accompanied by consonant interchanges.

19. THE STRONG VERBS
There were about 300 strong verbs in OE. they were native words descending from PG with parallels in other OG languages.
They are divided into 7 classes.
Classes from 1 to 6 use vowel gradation. Class 7 includes reduplicating verbs, which originaly built their past forms by means of repeating the root- morpheme

20. THE STRONG VERBS
The principal forms:
Infinitive
Past Singular
Past Plural
Participle II

21. THE STRONG VERBS
The principal forms of all the strong verbs have the same endings irrespective of class
-an = for the Infinitive
Zero ending = for the Past Singular
-on – for Past Plural
-en – for Participle II

22. THE WEAK VERBS
The weak verbs derived their Past tense stem and the stem of Part II from the Present tense stem with the help of the dental suffix –d- or –t-. Normally they didn’t change their root vowel, but in some verbs suffixation was accompanied by a vowel interchange.

23. THE WEAK VERBS
The number of weak verbs in OE exceeded that of strong verbs. Their number was constantly growing since all new verbs derived from other stems were conjugated weak (except derivatives of strong verbs with prefixes).
Among the weak verbs there were many derivatives of OE noun and adjective stems and derivatives of strong verbs.

24. THE WEAK VERBS
They are subdivided into 3 classes
The principal forms are:
Infinitive
Past Tense
Participle II

25. MINOR GROUPS OF VERBS
PRETERITE-PRESENT
ANOMALOUS
SUPPLETIVE

26. Preterite-present verbs
Originally the Present tense forms of these verbs were Past tense forms (=IE perfect forms, denoting past actions relevant for the present). Later these forms acquired a present meaning but reserved many formal features of the Past tense.
The verbs were inflected in the Present mostly like the Past tense of strong verbs. In the Past they were inflected mostly like weak verbs.

27. Preterite-present verbs
There were 12 preterite-present verbs in OE.
Six of them survived in modern English.
Most of these verbs didn’t indicate actions, but expressed a kind of attitude to an action denoted by another verb, an Infinitive which followed the preterite-present (= they were used like modal verbs, and eventually developed into modern verbs).

28. ANOMALOUS VERBS
OE willan was an irregular verb with the meaning of volition and desire; it resembled the preterite- presents in meaning and function, as it indicated an attitude to an action and was often followed by an Infinitive.
Eventually willan became a modal verb, like the surviving preterite-presents, and, together with sculan developed into an auxiliary (NE shall, will, should, would).

29. SUPPLETIVE VERBS
OE 3ān (NE go), whose Past tense was built from a different root: 3ān – eōde – 3e-3ān
OE bēon (NE be) – an ancient (IE) suppletive verb.