Strong verbs

The terms strong and weak verbs were introduced by Jacob Grimm but since they are not self exclamatory modern linguists use the terms verbs with suffixation (weak) and vocalic (strong). The strong type was from IE origin. The verbs of this type are based on the use of IE phenomenon ablaut or vowel gradation. It can be found in Russian: иёз – везу, гром-гремит/ The most typical variety of IE ablaut was e-o (qualitative). e-zero (quantitative).

The strong type (about 300 verbs) was based on IE ablaut e-o, i-a, e-zero. the past tense was formed by changing the root vowel. Participle 2 with the help of suffix –en. Non productive type. 4 principal parts (inf, past sing, past pl, participle 2) Subdivided in all GMC lang into 7 classes: cl 1 wrītan(inf) wrāt(past sg) writon (past pl) written (participle

Classes 6,7 differ from the first 5 classes bec they show identical vowels in the past sg and pl forms – a step towards the modern verb system.

The number of strong verbs was decreasing bec it was a non-producive type. Only about 70 survived in ME. Some died out as lexical units, others became weak verbs (laugh, help)

Strong Verbs and their Development

As far as the strong verbs were a non-productive class, some strong verbs turned into weak with time, i.e. started to employ -t/-d suffix in their form-building (e.g. to climb, to help, to swallow, to wash, etc.). Thus in NE only 70 strong verbs out of 300 in OE remained.

The strong verbs were subdivided into 7 classes according to the type of vowel gradation/ablaut. The classes that survived best through different periods of the history were classes 1, 3, 6: cl 3:NE find found found

We can see that the following changes occurred:In ME the inflections -an, -on, -en were all reduced to just one inflection à -en.In NE the ending -n was lost in the Infinitive and preserved in the Participle 2 in order to distinguish these two forms.In NE Past Singular and Past Plural forms were unified, usually with the Singular form preferred as a unified form because Past Plural and Participle 2 often had similar forms and it was hard to distinguish them (e.g. ME writen (Past Pl) – writen (Part. 2))à the category of Number disappeared in the Verb.

In ModE the subdivision into classes was lost though we still can trace some peculiarities of this or that class in the forms of the irregular verbs.

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<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Old English weak verbs and their further development	\|	Preterite-present and anomalous

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