Appendix:Old French verbs

The Old French language is an extinct Romance language spoken from roughly 824 - 1340. It derived from Vulgar and Medieval Latin. Much like modern French and other modern Romance languages, the four principal Latin conjugations became three, but all infinitive endings were preserved as -(i)er, -oir, -re, and -ir/-ïr. Instead of the Latin second and third conjugation endings being merged, -oir and -re together became a single class and treated as third group.

Old French was a series of dialects and varied much more from region to region than modern French does, so the rules given here are very general, as it would be impractical to try to include all the regional variations in one appendix.

First conjugation
First conjugation verbs mainly are derived from Latin first conjugation ones. The -are ending of Latin infinitives becomes -er as it does in modern French.

Verbs in -ier
Also have the same origin as -er verbs, but instead became -ier after palatals and as a result of the regular ejection of before open front vowels, or after palatals  or. Some verbs which also end in -ier like use the conjugation -er instead of -ier.

Second conjugation
Second conjugation verbs mainly are descended from the fourth conjugation in Latin. The -ire ending of Latin infinitives becomes -ir, as it does in modern French, as well as many other Romance languages.

Third conjugation
The third conjugation, as in modern French, is made up of all the verbs that do not fit into the first and second conjugation. Therefore, there is no consistent conjugation. Although the section of -re verbs includes the conjugation, it has many exceptions.

Verbs in -re
The ending of Latin infinitives becomes  as it does in modern French.

Verbs in -oir
The ending of Latin infinitives becomes  as it does in modern French. There are no "regular" -oir verbs unlike the third conjugation infinitive -re in Modern French, so all -oir verbs are irregular.

Infinitives
Old French often has more than one infinitive for the same verb. That is, more than one infinitive with the same conjugation. For first conjugation verbs, this often means -er and -ier forms being interchangeable, such as or, or  or. There are a few instances of third conjugation verbs with varying infinitives (usually one with a stressed root and one with an unstressed root):


 * or
 * or
 * or
 * or
 * or
 * or

Agreement of the past participle
Unlike in modern French, the past participle can agree even when it comes after the direct object:
 * Dit : « Amis, or vent Kaherdin. Sa nef ai veüe en la mer. » (Tristan, )
 * Elle dit : « Ami, Kaherdin arrive. J'ai vu son bateau sur la mer. »
 * She says, "Friend, Kaherdin is coming. I have seen her boat on the sea."

veüe is the feminine singular form of the past participle of veoir. In modern French, vu does not agree with bateau (or nef, which still exists but is archaic).