1.Introduction (1) Old English is characterised by a significant number of synonyms. Nouns, adjectives, and adverbs which could occupy an alliterating position in poetry decreased in frequency as soon as alliterative poems were replaced by rhyming poems, together with compounds, first elements of which were employed for alliteration. Verbs were not necessarily used for alliteration, except for infinitives and participles, but they also suffered conflict for survival. It is well attested by Gorrell (1895) that there was a rivalry between cwedan and secgan among the synonymous verbs of saying. The former took direct speech and the dative of person with the preposition to as the indirect object, while the latter governed indirect speech/questions and the dative of person without to; these syntactic features were gradually transferred from the former to the latter, and from the latter to tellan, around the time of transition from late Old to early Middle English, and eventually cwedan was fossilised and died out in Modern English. (2) There is also an obvious confusion and merger between pyncan and pencan, an 'impersonal' verb and a personal one, especially between the preterite and the past participle forms puht(e) and poht(e), which is examined by van der Gaaf (1904). Thus the semantic rivalry may lead to syntactic changes, morphological mergers, and/or the replacement of one of the synonyms by a native or foreign synonym, and to the ultimate demise of the once flourishing word. There must be cases of less obvious conflict caused by morphological resemblance, considering the fact that a number of Old English synonyms disappeared in the course of the language history. This cannot be explained away only by the prosodic change from alliterative to rhyming verse. There must be phonological and morphological as well as syntactic and semantic features that caused the conflict between synonyms or beyond groups of synonyms. In this paper I try to illustrate the process of morphological merger of several verbs through the extant texts of Old and Middle English periods in order to find the causes of their demise and survival. 2. wendan and gewendan Wendan 'to turn' takes the accusative as a coreferential pronoun in the reflexive construction, while gewendan 'to turn' takes the dative, as in (1) Pa gebealh hine se cynincg and to his bedde eode. wende hine to wage woodlice gebolgen. 'Then the king became angry and went to his bed, and turned himself to the wall, madly enraged.' (AELS (Book of Kings) 178-93) (2) He forlet pa Ipoet swurd stician on him 7 gewende him ut aet sumere opre duran, od Ipoet he eft becom to his agenum geferon. 'He then left the sword stuck on him and went himself out at another door, until he came again to his own comrades.' (Judges 3.24) But in some instances the reverse is found, as in (3) Nicanor pa sceawode salomones tempi. and swor purh his godas poet he paet godes hus wolde mid fyre forbaernan butan him man betaehte iudan gebundene to bismorlicum deade. wende him swa awaeg woodlice geyrsod. 'Nicanor then beheld Solomon's temple, and swore by his gods that he wished to burn up the house of God with fire, except Judas should be given up to him bound, (and) so turned himself away, madly enraged.' (AELS (Maccabees) 612-6) (4) Dis weard pa gekydd oaem casere sona, & he hine gewende to his gewunelicum gebedum & paet gewinn betohte pam welwillendan Haelende. 'This was immediately made known to the emperor, and he went himself to his usual service, and entrusted the strife to the benevolent Saviour.' (AE JudgEp 71) From late Old English onwards the accusative-dative syncretism proceeds, and the prefix ge-disappears, and consequently the two verbs merge into one. 3. pyncan and pencan Pencan 'to think', a verb in personal use, and pyncan 'to seem', a verb in 'impersonal' (4) use, are said to be confused in the preterite and the past participle forms, poht(e) and puht(e), as in (5) C: Per ich lai a sweueter agan ich forto slepe. …
