Some notes on strong verbs and related issues

The situation in Indo-European

	Example	Present	Preterit singular	Preterit plural	Past participle
Class 1-3	ride, freeze, sing, help	e	o	ø	ø
Class 4	bear	e	o	e:	ø
Class 5	give	e	o	e:	e
Class 6	take	a	o	o:	a
Class 7	fall	reduplication

Zeroing in on Classes 1-3

Verb class	Example	IE	Gmc	OE		GVS
1	ride	ei, oi, i	i:, ai, i	i:, a:, i	i:, o:, i	ai, o:, i
2	freeze	eu, ou, u	eu, au, o	eo:, e:a, o	e:, o:, o	i:, o:, o
3a	sing	eN, oN, N	iN, aN, uN
3b	help	eL, oL, L	eL, aL, oL

The decline of principal parts

• present
• preterit sg.
• preterit pl.
• past participle

The distinction between the two preterit forms continues to the present day with be: singular was vs. plural were. But with all other verbs, the preterit sg. and preterit pl. collapsed in the course of Middle English.

• In northern English, they merged towards the singular, giving sing, sang, sung.
• In southern English, they merged toward the plural, giving sing, sung, sung.

The southern development is thus analogous to the case of regular verbs in that there is no surface distinction between the simple preterit and the past participle.

Various trajectories

Strong to completely regular

• leap, lope, lopen
• walk, welk, walken

Based on which verb class the following verbs belonged to in Old English, what "should" the second and third principal parts be?

• ache (Class 6, cf. take)
• bake (Class 6, cf. take)
• chide (Class 1, cf. write)
• cleave (Class 2, cf. freeze, choose)
• creep (Class 2, cf. freeze, choose)
• crow (Class 7, cf. blow, grow, throw)
• glide (Class 1, cf. write)
• help (Class 3b)
• laugh (Class 6, cf. take - the <gh> was pronounced like <ch> in Scottish loch)
• lose (Class 2, cf. freeze, choose)
• melt (Class 3b)
• mow (Class 7, cf. blow, grow, throw)
• shape (Class 6, cf. take)
• win (Class 3a, cf. sing)
• writhe (Class 1, cf. write)

Weak irregular to completely regular

The following verb has always been weak, but was once not regular.

• reach, raught, raught (like teach)

Against the tide: Weak to strong

• Three principal parts
  • wear - assimilated to Class 4, bear, tear, swear
• Two principal parts
  • drag (related to draw) - past tense drug (and even drugged) perhaps through confusion with drug, v. 'drag'
  • fling, sling, slink, string - three principal parts are also attested; also sometimes weak forms (slinged, slinked, stringed)
  • sneak
  • stick
  • spit
• Variability
  • dive - dove~dived - dove-dived
  • saw - sawed - sawed~sawn (Middle English sew, sawn)
  • sew - sewed - sewed~sewn (Middle English sewn)
  • show - showed - shown~showed (Middle English shew, shewn)

Some remarkable cases

The following verbs share a remarkable property. What is it?

• catch
• dig
• strive

Back-formation

• hoise, hoised~hoist, hoised~hoist > hoist, hoisted, hoisted

A note from the future

A case study: Verbs in -ive

drive

• northern preterit drave
• southern preterit drove
• preterit pl. driven becomes obsolete in 15th c.
• past participle: droven, drove (with vowel of preterit pl.)

dive

• preterit Middle English def, then from 1500's dived
• dove is a North American and English innovation from the 1800's on

strive

• strove ~ strived (with strove always more common, even though the word was borrowed from French!)
• striven alternates with strived
• strove as the past participle is an innovation; also stroven

thrive

• throve ~ thrived
• thriven ~ thrived, throve

connive, derive, revive

• Clearly foreign, and hence all weak.

Fossil participles

Which verbs are the following fossil participles related to?

• beholden
• bereft
• bespoke
• clad
• cleft
• cloven
• drunken
• forlorn
• forsaken
• gilt
• graven
• hewn
• (un)kempt
• laden
• molten
• mown
• pent(-up)
• (mis)shapen
• (clean-, close-)shaven
• shod
• shorn
• shrunken
• smitten
• sodden
• stricken

More info