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Weak Verbs

§ 481. The evolution of the weak verbs in ME and in Early NE reveals a strong tendency towards greater regularity and order. Table 7 shows the main changes in the classes of weak verbs (subclasses of OE Class I are described in § 485 as sources of modern non-standard verbs: Class III is not shown as it did not exist in ME). The OE verbs of Class III, either joined the other classes of weak verbs as, e. g. OE libban, ME Class I liven, NE live or became irregular, e. g. OE habban, ME haven, NE have; OE secʒam, ME seyen, NE say.

Table 7

Changes of the Principal Forms of Weak Verbs in Middle English and Early New English

As seen from Table 7, in ME we can distinguish two classes of weak verbs with some rearrangement between the classes as compared with OE.

ME verbs of Class I took the ending -de in the past without an inter­mediate vowel before the dental suffix — and the ending -ed in the past Participle. They had descended from OE verbs of Class I with a long root syllable (containing a long vowel or a short vowel plus two consonants — OE dēman, temman — see § 204, Table 14, Cl. I (b), (c).

The verbs of Class II, which were marked by -ode, -od in OE, had weakened these endings to -ede, -ed in ME. Since a few verbs of OE Class I had -ede, -ed (the type la styrian), they are included in ME Class II. Consequently, the only difference between the two classes of weak verbs in ME was the presence or absence of the element -e- be­fore the dental suffix in the Past tense stem.

In Late ME the vowel [e] in unstressed medial and final syllables became very unstable and was lost. This change eliminated the differ­ences between the two classes and also the distinctions between the 2nd and 3rd principal forms, thus reducing the number of stems in the weak verbs from three to two. Late ME weak verbs are the immediate source of modern standard (regular) verbs.

§ 482. The development of the inflection -(e)de in Early NE shows the origins of the modern variants of the forms of the Past tense and Participle II in standard verbs:

§ 483. The marker of the Past tense and Participle II employed by the weak verbs — the dental suffix -d/-t — proved to be very productive in all historical periods. This simple and regular way of form-building, employed by the majority of OE verbs, attracted hundreds of new verbs in ME and NE. As mentioned above, many former strong verbs began to build weak forms alongside strong ones, the strong forms ultimately falling into disuse. The productivity of this device is borne out by the fact that practically all the borrowed verbs and all the newly-formed verbs in ME and NE built their Past tense and Participle II on the mod­el of weak verbs, e. g. skate, die, call (from O Scand), assist, charm (from Fr), decorate, execute (from L).

The reverse process — weak verbs changing into strong ones — was of rare occurrence. And nevertheless a few weak verbs adopted strong forms. These changes account for the forms of NE wear (which was formerly a weak verb of Class I, but acquired new forms by analogy with bear or tear, Class 4 of strong verbs), NE hide (which fell under the influence of rise, ride — Class I), ring, fling and string which came to be associated with Class 3 (sing) due to the obvious phonetic resemblance, and also dig, chide and stave. (In some verbs we find a mixture of the two types, weak and strong, e.g. OE scēawian, weak verb of Class I) has adopted the suffix -n from the strong conjugation, though its Past tense has remained weak, NE show, showed, shown.)

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