East Germanic strong verb
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This planned new article will describe the verb in Gothic parallel to the article West Germanic strong verb. It is subsidiary to the article Germanic verb.
[edit] Indo-European
The Indo-European vowel-alternations could be as follows:
- ei — oi — i
- eu — ou — u
- e — o — null
These are all the same, being an alternation between e - o - null with various modifications. Another type of ablaut was as follows:
- o — ō — a
Which is descended from:
- eh3 - oh3 - h3
Where h3 is a laryngeals which "colors" a preceding vowel in different ways. The important point is that all these classes are one and the same from an Pre-Proto-Indo-European point of view (that is, before the vowel coloring took place).
[edit] Germanic
In Germanic, these became the following classes:
- ī — ai — i
- iu — au — u/o
- e/i — a — u/o
- a — ō — a
In the last class there was also a lengthened grade with ē
In Gothic we find these forms:
- dreiban (ei = ī) — draif (3sing) — dribun (3pl) — dribans (past participle)
- biudan — bauþ — budun — budans
- hilpan (from *helpan) — halp — hulpun — hulpans
- qiman (from *qeman) — qam — qemun (e = ē) — qumans
- faran — for (o = ō) — forun (o = ō) — farans
In addition, we find a class of reduplicating verbs, with or without vowel alteration:
- haitan — haihait (=hehait) — haihaitun (=hehaitun) — haitans
- tekan — taitok — taitokun — tekans