Germanic Weak Verb - Modern Languages

Modern Languages

In the modern languages, the various classes have mostly been leveled into a single productive class. Icelandic, Norwegian and Frisian have retained two productive classes of weak verbs. (In Frisian, in addition to the class with -de, there is a class of je-verbs, where the dental suffix has dropped, i.e. -je < -iad.) Swiss German also has two types of weak verbs, descended from Class I and Classes II and III respectively of Old High German weak verbs and marked with -t and -et, respectively, in the past participle.

In the history of English, the following changes happened:

1. Most Class III verbs were moved into Class II prior to the historical period of Old English.
2. The remaining four Class III verbs moved into Class I or Class II late in Old English.
3. Throughout the Middle English period, Class I verbs gradually moved into Class II.

In Modern English, only one productive weak paradigm remains, derived from Class II. A number of Class I verbs still persist, e.g.:

• From Old English subclass (i): bring (brought)
• From Old English subclass (ii) or analogously: buy (bought); catch (caught); seek (sought); sell (sold); teach (taught); tell (told); think (thought); work (wrought)
• From Old English subclass (iii) or analogously: bend (bent); bet (bet); breed (bred); build (built); cast (cast); cost (cost); creep (crept); cut (cut); deal (dealt); dream (dreamt); feed (fed); flee (fled); hear (heard); hit (hit); hurt (hurt); keep (kept); kneel (knelt); knit (knit); lay (laid); lead (led); leap (leapt); leave (left); lend (lent); light (lit); lose (lost); mean (meant); meet (met); put (put); read (read); rend (rent) ; send (sent); set (set); shed (shed); shoot (shot); shut (shut); sleep (slept); speed (sped); spend (spent); spill (spilt); split (split); spread (spread); sweep (swept); thrust (thrust); upset (upset); wed (wed); weep (wept); as well as a few others
• From Old English Class III verbs: have (had); say (said)

As the previous list shows, although there is only one productive class of weak verbs, there are plenty of "irregular" weak verbs that don't follow the paradigm of this class. Furthermore, the regular paradigm in English is not unitary, but in fact is divided into subclasses in both the written and spoken language, although in different ways:

• In the written language, before the past-tense suffix -ed, short-stem verbs double the final consonant (e.g. dip (dipped)), while a -y following a consonant becomes -i (e.g. carry (carried)).
• In the spoken language, the past-tense suffix -ed is variously pronounced /t/, /d/, or /ɨd/ depending on the preceding consonant.

Both of these characteristics occur in a similar fashion in most or all the modern Germanic languages. In modern German, for example, descendants of the original subclass (ii) of Class I are still irregular (e.g. denken (dachte) "to think", brennen (brannte) "to burn"), and subclasses of the productive verb paradigm are formed by verbs ending in -eln or -ern and in -ten or -den, among others.