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Strong verbs in OE.

Strong Verbs

There were about three hundred strong verbs in Old English. They were native verbs of Protogermanic origin and usually have parallels in other Germanic languages. They are divided into seven classes. Gradation in Old English develops from common Indo-European gradation but the vowels differ due to numerous phonetic changes in Germanic languages and then in English, so the vowels may be quite different, but the principle is the same.

 

Class I Gradation formula: i — a — i — i

writan - wrat — writon - writen (to write) Other verbs of this class are: drifan (to drive), bitan (to bite), stridan (to stride), scinan (to shine) etc. As the third and the fourth forms originally had stress on the final syllable, if the verbs had voiceless fricatives in the second syllable, these turned into voiced stops (Verner's law): snidan — snad - snidon - sniden (to cut).

Class II Gradation formula: co - ea - u - o

The four basic form of the verbs of this class is: beodan - bead - budon - boden (to offer)

Other verbs of this class are: creopan (to creep), ceosan (to choose), fleotan (to fleet), dreosan (to fall), freosan (to freeze).

The verbs that had s after the root vowel had the change of the consonant (according to Verner's law this consonant changed into r):

freosan - freas - fruron - froren (to freeze)

Class III

The first and the second classes of strong verbs had a long root vowel or a diphthong) followed by one consonant. In the third class of Germanic strong verbs a short vowel was followed by two consonants. In Old English that was a position where short vowels were subjected to assimilative processes, hence there are several variations of root vowels in this class of verbs.

a) if nasal sound + another consonant followed the root vowel the gradation formula was:

i - a(o) - u - u drincan - dranc - druncon - druncen (to drink); findan - fand - fiindon — fitnden (to find). Here belong also such verbs as bindan (to bind), swindan (to vanish), windan (to wind), spinnan (to spin), winnan (to work) etc.

b) if l + another consonant followed the root vowel, then this formula was

i/e - ea - u - o helpan - healp - hulpon - holpen (to help)

Other verbs having such sounds are: delfan (to delve), sweljan (to swallow), meltan (to melt), sweltan (to die), bellan (to bark), swellan (to swell), melcan (to milk).

c) if r + consonant or h + consonant followed the root vowels then breaking in the first two forms changed the formula into

eo - ea - u - o steorfan - stearf - sturfon - storfen (to die). Here also belong ceorfan (to carve), weorpan (to throw), beorcan (to bark) etc.

Class IV The verbs of this class have only one consonant after the short root vowel, and it is a sonorant - r or -l in rare cases - in or n -The scheme of gradation is

e - e; - e;- o

stelan - stxl - stxlon - stolen (to steal) Here also belong beran (to bear), cwelan (to die), helan (to conceal) etc.

Class V These verbs also have a short root vowel followed by only one consonant other than r, l, or n and here the basic vowels are:



e — x - x — e sprecan - sprec — spriecon - sprecen (to speak)

Other verbs that formed their past tense and the participle II without deviation from the original scheme are metan (to measure), etan (to eat), wesan (to be) etc.

In the verbs where the first short sound had palatal mutation, the consonant after it in the infinitive (originally one, as is common for this class of verbs) was doubled:

sittan - sxt - sxton - seten (to sit)

Classes VI and VII of the strong verbs are specifically Germanic (they have no counterparts in other Indo-European languages), and are characterized by the fact that the vowel of the infinitive was repeated in the form of the Participle II, and the vowel in the past tense forms was the same for both the singular and the plural:

Class VI The formula of gradation here is

a - o - o - a faran - for — foron - faren (to go)

Here belong such verbs as wadan (to walk), bacan (to bake), wascan (to wash).

There are verbs of this class that have other vowels, which are conditioned by the same factors as the variations in other classes:

if there was h sound in the middle of the word, it was dropped in the infinitive in the process of contraction and voiced in the other forms, and the basic forms are:

slean - sloç - sloçon - slxçen (to beat); flean –floç -floçon - fleçen (to flay)

Class VII The most common are the following patterns:

a - e - e - a

x_ ei - e - x

a - eo - eo - a

ea - co - eo - ea

ea — co - eo — ea

hatan - het - heton - haten (to call);

Isetan - let - leton - lxten (to let), etc.

As a result of later developments, only a few remnants of the original seven classes of strong verbs can be found in Modern English; verbs formerly belonging to classes I, IlI a, b, IV, VI survive to some extent; others have changed beyond recognition. A significant number of the verbs belonging to the seven classes of the strong conjugation have changed into the weak conjugation: many others disappeared altogether and semantically have been replaced by other verbs, borrowed from other languages (Latin or French).

 

 


Date: 2015-01-29; view: 2228


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