Another class of nouns, both masc. and fem., had a nom. sg. form that was always shorter
than its other forms (e.g., ber—baron, none—nonain). Adjectives in Old French tended
to precede, not follow, nouns, and most agreed with them in gender and in number.
Among other parts of speech, the Old French system of articles (<[IL]LE) resembled
the modern paradigm except for a masc. nom. sg. and pl. form, li. The definite article was
used in general to individualize a substantive; it did not appear with abstract nouns. The
indefinite article uns (<UN[U]S) was slower to appear. Old French demonstratives
included forms for proximate (cist or cest; ceste) and distant (cil or cel; cele) reference.
By the end of the 12th century, the proximate forms had become specialized as
adjectives, but cil and cele functioned equally as pronouns and adjectives.
Certain Old French parts of speech had two sets of forms, tonic and atonic. Tonic
forms were relatively more autonomous, appearing in stressed position in a phrase—after
a preposition, for example. Atonic forms tended to precede stressed forms, such as verbs.
Among personal pronouns, the first two oblique forms were represented by a stressed and
unstressed series of forms that did not distinguish between direct and indirect objects:
tonic: mei (moi), tei (toi), sei (soi); atonic: me, te, se. The system of possessives, too, was
divided into tonic and atonic forms, and in the masc. obl. sg. forms mien (tonic) and mon
(atonic) can be seen the origin of the modern French distinction between pronoun and
adjective.
As for verb tenses, of the Latin indicative tense forms, active voice, only the present,
imperfect, and the perfect persisted into Old French. A new future form was created from
the infinitive+present indicative of HABERE (e.g., chanter+ai>chanterai) and a
compound future perfect was developed (j’aurai chanté). A future-in-the-past that could
also be used to describe hypothetical or contingent action, the “conditional,” was added,
built on the infinitive +the imperfect endings of HABERE: chanter+oie, -ois, -oit, etc.
The new compound form, the passé composé, had mainly present perfect meaning. Thus,
in the 12th century Old French had five simple tenses of the indicative: present,
imperfect, simple past (passé simple), future, and conditional. There were five compound
tenses: present perfect, past perfect (formed in two ways, either with the imperfect or the
simple past of the auxiliary), a future perfect, and a conditional perfect. The passé
surcomposé did not begin to appear before the early 13th century.
There were three classes of Old French verbs: I: infinitive in -er and -ier, II: infinitive
in -ir, present participle with -iss; and, III: infinitive in -ir, -re, -eir (>oir). The relatively
more distinctive personal endings of verbs made expressed subjects less necessary than in
the modern language.
Table 2. Old French Present Indicative
I. chanterII. fenir III. corre
chant fenis cor
chantes fenis cors
chante fenist cort
chantons fenissons corons
chantez fenissez corez
chantent fenissent corentMedieval france: an encyclopedia 712