Talk:Strong inflection

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I would not have said that there are no strong nouns in English. There are two patterns of nouns which each exhibit just a few nouns each, and a third that possesses two apparent cognates. However, the parallels are so obvious that we can't just necessarily relegate these nouns to irregular classes.

The first pattern (2 nouns):

• goose (sg) vs geese (pl)
• foot (sg) vs feet (pl)

The second pattern (2 nouns):

• mouse (sg) vs mice (pl)
• louse (sg) vs lice (pl)

The third pattern (2 nouns):

• man (sg) vs men (pl) (cf. German Mann vs Männer)
• woman (sg) vs women (pl)

It could be argued that the word woman formed its plural by analogy with man > men. Also, phonetic changes have occurred in some of the words. However, these examples should be enough to demonstrate some patterns, albeit limited ones, in English strong nouns, as well as the existence of these nouns themselves. Also, I have to make mention of the fact that the reason there are no strong adjectives in English is because there are no weak ones, either. Adjectives take no affixes, and they do not inflect for number, case and gender in the way that adjectives in some other languages do. This means that all adjectives in English are invariable, and the distinction between weak and strong adjectives becomes useless for English. thefamouseccles 00:29 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

A reasonable suggestion - but these aren't classed as strong nouns. Essentially, the definition of strong as meaning that there is a vowel change in the inflected form applies only to verbs. (In Old Norse, many strong nouns, such as himinn, are declined without any vowel changes.) If possible, something substantial about strong nouns and adjectives should be added to the article. (I didn't think I knew enough about it to write any more than I already have.) The Oxford English Dict. says of strong: "Of Teutonic nouns and adjectives: belonging to any of those declensions of which the old Teutonic stem ended otherwise than in n... Some scholars, following the letter of Grimm's definition, inconveniently restrict the term strong to the vocalic stems." NB In Middle English, strong was inflected strong, strenger, strengest, and we still have old, elder, eldest. But again these aren't counted as strong adjectives. Rjp_uk 20:42 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't think "woman"-"women" is formed in analogy with "man"-"men", rather, the word "woman" comes from Old English wifman (wif="woman", man="human person", the modern meanings wife="married woman" and man="masculine person" are more recent), so since wifman was a compound to begin with, it has always been conjugated with the similar pattern as the last part of the compound word... http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=woman&searchmode=none

"Strong" does not necessarily have anything to do with vowel changes. The Germanic trong verb shows ablaut, of course, but some Germanic weak verbs also show vowel changes. In German nouns, weak are those with an -n throughout the present stem, and all others - including those with vowel changes, but also including all regular nouns, are "strong", though the word "strong" is not always used here. In Germanic adjectives, the difference is between two parallel systems of inflections, neither of which involve vowel changes. In Hebrew, the meaning is quite different again, but likewise, vowel changes have nothing to do with it. In other words, there is no unifying characteristic for all uses of the word strong, except that it is always the opposite of weak. I have extended the discussion of this in the article on weak (grammatical term), and as "strong" is only meaningful as a counterpoint to "weak" I have cut this article and cross-referenced. No need to say everything twice! There was a request to have the two articles merged completely, but I think this is a good compromise. --Doric Loon 12:52, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Strong adjectives with ablaut?

The current line in the article is "The Germanic strong verb, for example, is characterised by a vowel shift called ablaut, but there is nothing comparable in the German strong adjective inflections". Not true. EN: Old, elder, eldest DE: Alt, älter, ältest; How about DE: Nah, näher, nächsten, related to the words "neighbor" and "next"? samwaltz 06:05, 11 January 2007 (UTC)