Among the semantic groups of verbs, the verbs of motion show many-sidedness in their function in medieval English. They are used intransitively, as long as they denote a simple motion, but can also be used transitively, especially in the prefixed form (e.g. gan and gegan). They can be used ‘impersonally’ in the sense ‘to happen’; sometimes a personal (pro)nominal co-occurs in the oblique case (e.g. hit aeode and him aeode). They can be used ‘reflexively’, i.e. with the coreferential pronoun. Contrary to the opinion that him gewende and gewende should always be semantically distinct, my investigation on Old English contexts does not find any convincing evidence for their strict semantic distinction. The intransitive, ‘reflexive’, ‘impersonal’, and (I may add) passive constructions are likely to represent the middle voice syntactically rather than morphologically.

Some verbs of motion function as auxiliaries. Onginnan, beginnan, aginnan and ginnan show a kind of grammaticalisation, which results in a divergent change in Middle English, i.e. ‘begin + infinitive’ on the one hand and ‘gan/con + infinitive’ on the other. Cuman, gan, gewitan and witan become grammaticalised when they take the infinitive of another verb of motion, though the degree of grammaticalisation should differ and be the largest in the case of the last one (i.e. in the form of uton).

Prefixed verbs have not simply developed into verb-adverb combinations. Bound-morph prefixes are mostly reduced (e.g. onginnan → aginnan), replaced (e.g. by another bound-morph prefix like onginnan → beginnan, or by a more distinct, free-morph prefix like forferan → forðferan) or died out (e.g. gecuman → cuman).