Verbs of motion, including verbs of rest, may originally be used intransitively. Transitive uses, however, have not been foreign to them, with or without a prefix. Moreover, reflexive uses have been found almost all of them with coreferential and, in most cases, pleonastic pronouns in the dative, in the accusative, or, in a few cases, in the genitive. These transitive and reflexive uses have appeared and disappeared in the course of the history of the language by analogy, by conflict, or by chance. Often a verb itself may have disappeared because of the rivalry among the synonyms.

In addition to the rivalry among the synonyms, Modern English contrasting (and somewhat overlapping) uses of come and go may be traced back in Old English. In most instances, however, they were occasional, unintentional uses which happened to be parallel to Modern English usage. Gan and faran/feran, with their etymologically related forms, were rivals in the Old English period. A strong verb faran and a weak verb feran had been morphologically confused from a very early stage of the extant texts. I discuss, therefore, these two verbs together in a group and call them the faran-group, in contrast with the outliving gan-group. Distinctive uses of faran and feran or gan and gangan are also exemplified, though the two groups of verbs are often used alternatively.