Germanic weak verb
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In Germanic languages, including English, weak verbs are by far the largest group of verbs, which are therefore often regarded as the norm, though historically they are not the oldest or most original group.
- For other aspects of the verb in Germanic languages see the article Germanic verb.
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[edit] General description
In Germanic languages, weak verbs are those verbs that form their preterites and past participles by means of a dental suffix, an inflection that contains a /t/ or /d/ sound or similar. In English the preterite and participle are always identical, but in most of the languages there are three principal parts. For example:
| Infinitive | Preterite | Past Participle | |
|---|---|---|---|
| English (regular) | to love | loved | loved |
| to laugh | laughed | laughed | |
| English (irregular) | to say | said | said |
| to send | sent | sent | |
| to buy | bought | bought | |
| to set | set | set | |
| German | lieben (love) | liebte | geliebt |
| bringen (bring) | brachte | gebracht |
For comparative purposes we may refer to this generally as a dental, although in some of the languages, including English, /t/ and /d/ are alveolar rather than dental consonants. In English, the dental is a /d/ after a voiced consonant (loved) or vowel, and a /t/ after a voiceless consonant (laughed), though English uses the spelling in <d> in most cases, regardless of pronunciation, with the exception of a few verbs with irregular spellings.
In German and Dutch, terminal devoicing means that final consonants are never voiced, so the pronunciation /d/ does not occur in German and the Dutch past participle (in Dutch preterite it does occur, because the suffix after a voiced consonant there is <de(n)>, in which the <d> is still followed by a vowel). Nevertheless, Dutch does distinguish the letters <d> and <t> in the past participle because if the participle is used as an adjective the /d/ resurfaces in the inflected forms. (See Dutch spelling for the 't kofschip rule.) German on the other hand knows only spellings in <t>.
In Icelandic, the dental has become a voiced dental fricative /ð/, as it was in some verbs in Old English. In Afrikaans it has disappeared altogether.
[edit] Weak and strong
Weak verbs should be contrasted with strong verbs, which form their past tenses by means of ablaut (vowel gradation: sing - sang - sung). Most verbs in the early stages of the Germanic languages were strong. However, as the ablaut system is no longer productive except in rare cases of analogy, almost all new verbs in Germanic languages are weak, and the majority of the original strong verbs have become weak by analogy.
[edit] Strong to weak transformations
As an example of originally strong verbs becoming weak we may consider the development from the Old English strong verb scūfan to modern English shove:
- scūfan scēaf scofen (strong class 2)
- shove shoved shoved
Many hundreds of English weak verbs go back to Old English strong verbs.
In some cases a verb has become weak in the preterite but not in the participle, or (rarely) vice versa. These verbs may be thought of as "semi-strong" (not a technical term). Dutch has a number of examples of this:
- wassen waste gewassen ("to wash")
- jagen joeg gejaagd ("to hunt")
An example in English is:
- sow sowed sown (strong class 7 with weak preterite)
Often the old strong participle may survive as an adjective long after it has been replaced with a weak form in verbal constructions. German backen (to bake) now has the participle gebackt, but baked cheese is gebakener Käse. The English adjective forlorn is an old strong participle of a now defunct prefixed form of lose.
[edit] Weak to strong transformations
The reverse process is also possible, though very rare: verbs which were originally weak can become strong by analogy. This can also be partial, producing "semi-strong" verbs:
- show showed shown (originally weak verb with participle modelled on sown)
Weak verbs which develop strong forms are often unstable. A typical example is German fragen (to ask), which for a time in the 18th century had the forms fragen frug gefragen by analogy with tragen (to carry); but this proved to be a passing fashion (though a present tense frägt is still heard in dialects).
[edit] Origins of the weak conjugation
The weak conjugation of verbs is an innovation of Proto-Germanic (unlike the older strong verbs, the basis of which goes back to Proto-Indo-European). While primary verbs (those inherited from PIE) already had an ablaut-based perfect form which was the basis of the Germanic strong preterite, secondary verbs (those derived from other forms after the break-up of PIE) had to form a preterite otherwise; this necessitated the creation of the weak conjugation.
[edit] Denominative derivation
The vast majority of weak verbs are secondary, or derived. The two main types of derived verbs were denominative and deverbative. A denominative verb is one which has been created out of a noun. The denominative in Indo-European and early Germanic was formed by adding an ablauting thematic *-yé/ó- suffix to a noun or adjective. This created verbs such as Gothic namnjan 'to name'.
[edit] Deverbative derivation
A deverbative verb is one created from another verb. One very productive source was the derivation of new verbs with causative meanings from existing verbs, resulting in many pairs of related strong and weak verbs: the original strong verb fall fell fallen has a related weak verb fell felled felled, which means "to cause (a tree) to fall"; strong sit sat sat and lie lay lain are matched with weak set set set and lay laid laid, meaning "to cause something to sit" or "lie" respectively. Occasionally semantic shifts make these pairs difficult to recognise. German strong leiden litt gelitten ("to suffer") has the derived weak verb leiten ("to lead"), which makes sense when one realises that leiden originally meant "walk, go" and came to its present meaning through the idea of "undergoing" suffering.
In Germanic, the deverbative derivation was almost exclusively made by changing the vowel of the root to o-grade and adding the causative/iterative *-éye/o- suffix. Gothic shows a more archaic form in its infinitive satjan < *sodeyo- < *sed- 'sit'. In both varieties, the -y- component remains most often in Gothic (written as <j>), but in all applicable cases it caused i-mutation in the other Germanic languages (this explains the vowel in English set : Gothic sat-).
[edit] Other types
There are primary verbs that date to Indo-European that took a weak conjugation because they were unable to take a perfect, including verbs that had zero grade of the root in the present and were therefore unable to show the ablaut distinction necessary for a strong preterite. This was the case with the verbs waurkjan 'to work, create', bugjan 'to buy', and sokjan 'to seek' (Gothic forms).
Preterite-present verbs are primary verbs in which the PIE present was lost, and the perfect was given a present meaning. These needed a new past tense, which followed the weak pattern.
All borrowings from other languages into Germanic were weak.
[edit] Theory of periphrastic origin
The origin of the dental suffix is uncertain. Perhaps the most commonly-held theory is that it evolved out of a periphrastic construction with the verb to do: Germanic *lubōjana dēdo ("love-did") → *lubōdo → Old English lufode → loved. This would be analogous to the way that in Modern English we can form an emphatic past tense with "did": I did love.
The common PIE root *dheH1- meaning 'do' was a root aorist, and as such did not take a perfect. It did, however, take a reduplicating present. The imperfect of this root is taken by many to be the origin of the dental suffix.
| Periphrastic origin of dental suffix | PIE imperfect of "do" | Proto-Germanic imperfect of "do" | Gothic weak preterite ending |
|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | *dhe-dhéH1-m | *dedēn | -da |
| *dhe-dhéH1-s | *dedēs | -des | |
| *dhe-dhéH1-t | *dedē | -da | |
| Plural | *dhe-dhH1mé | *dém → *dedum (by analogy) | -dedum |
| *dhe-dhH1té | *dédd → *deduþ (by analogy) | -deduþ | |
| *dhe-dhH1n̩t | *dedun | -dedun |
This view is not without objections. These are two often-proposed difficulties with this explanation:
- Gothic -e- in the plural is long, but PGmc is short.
- Reduplication is only in the Gothic plural.
These objections are sometimes answered as follows:
- There might have been a refashioning according to cases like gēbun, viz. *gegbun > gēbun : *dedun → dēdun.
- Reduplication only in the plural can easily be explained by haplology in Proto-Germanic (i.e., *dede- being reduced to *de-) for the singular, with a later development of haplology for the plural in non-East Germanic languages.
[edit] Theory of participial origin
Another theory is that it came from a past participle ending, a final *-daz from PIE *-tos (cf Latin amatus), with personal endings added to it at a later stage. This theory is also disputed because of its inability to explain all the facts.
[edit] Historical conjugations
In the medieval Germanic languages, a number of different classes of weak verbs had to be distinguished, according to the consonants in the stem. Class 1 is known as the -jan conjugation, because their development was influenced by a /j/ in Germanic, which however is only attested in Old Saxon. In Old English, class 1 weak verbs commonly had preterites ending in -ede. This group commonly experienced consonant doubling in the infinitive caused by West Germanic Gemination. Class 2 weak verbs typically ended in -ode in Old English. Besides these two main classes there were several smaller ones.
[edit] Modern paradigms
In the modern languages, these distinctions have mostly been levelled. Only Frisian has retained two productive classes of weak verbs. In addition to the class with the -de, there is a class of je-verbs, where the dental suffix has dropped ( -je<-iad). The regular weak verbs conjugate as follows.
[edit] West Germanic
| English | Afrikaans | Dutch | West Frisian | German | Yiddish | ||
| Infinitive | to work | werk 1 | werken | wurkje | leare 2 | werken | (verkn) װערקן |
| present | I work (thou workest) he works (worketh) we work you work they work |
ek werk jy werk hy werk ons werk julle werk hulle werk |
ik werk jij werkt hij werkt wij werken jullie werken zij werken |
ik wurkje dou wurkest hy wurket wy wurkje jim wurkje hja wurkje |
ik lear dou learst hy leart wy leare jim leare hja leare |
ich werke du werkst er werkt wir werken ihr werkt sie werken |
(ikh verk) איך װערק (du verkst) דו װערקסט (er verkt) ער װערקט (mir verkn) מיר װערקן (ir verkt) איר װערקט (zey verkn) זי װערקן |
| Preterite | I worked (thou workedst) he worked we worked you worked they worked |
(not used) | ik werkte jij werkte hij werkte wij werkten jullie werkten zij werkten |
ik wurke dou wurkest hy wurke wy wurken jim wurken hja wurken |
ik learde dou leardest hy learde wy learden jim learden hij learden |
ich werkte du werktest er werkte wir werkten ihr werktet sie werkten |
(not used) |
| Past participle | worked | gewerk | gewerkt | wurke | leard | gewerkt | (geverkt) געװערקט |
- 1. The distinction between the infinitive and present forms of Afrikaans verbs has been lost with the exception of a very few such as wees and is, "to be" and "is/am/are"
- 2. learn, teach
[edit] North Germanic
| Swedish | Icelandic | Faroese | |
| Infinitive | verka | verka | virka 3 |
| present | jag verkar du verkar han verkar vi verkar ni verkar de verkar |
ég verka þú verkar hann verkar við verkum þið verkið þeir verka |
eg virki tú virkar hann virkar vit virka tit virka teir virka |
| Preterite | jag verkade du verkade han verkade vi verkade ni verkade de verkade |
ég verkaði þú verkaðir hann verkaði við verkuðum þið verkuðuð þeir verkuðu |
eg virkaði tú virkaði hann virkaði vit virkaðu tit virkaðu teir virkaðu |
| Past participle | verkat | verkaður | virkaður |
- 3. prepare, manufacture
[edit] Irregularities
Weak verbs are often thought of as having a regular inflection, but not all weak verbs are regular verbs; some have been made irregular by ellipsis or contraction, such as hear ~ heard; while others are merely irregular due to the eccentricities of English spelling, such as lay ~ laid. In German, verbs ending in -eln or -ern have slightly different inflection patterns. There are many other examples. The Preterite-present verbs are in a sense weak verbs with very significant irregularities; but usually they are not bracketed under weak verbs.
One particularly interesting category of irregular weak verb is the so-called rückumlaut verb. This is discussed in the article on Germanic umlaut under the section "Umlaut in Germanic verbs". An original -j- in the inflection caused the whole of the present stem (including the infinitive) to experience a fronting of the stem vowel, though the past tense retains the back vowel. Another irregularity is a consonant alternation sometimes referred to by the German word Primärberührung, which looks superficially like Grammatischer Wechsel but in fact results from the phenomenon of the Germanic spirant law in early Germanic. In effect this is a process of assimilation of the plosive at the end of the stem caused by contact with the dental suffix. Both Rückumlaut and Primärberührung are observable in the verb to think:
- English: think thought
- German: denken dachte gedacht
Some school text books use the term "mixed verb" to describe these. This rests on the misconception that these verbs display both ablaut and a dental suffix, and are therefore at once strong and weak. But the vowel change is not ablaut.
[edit] Other meanings
The term "weak verb" was originally coined by Jacob Grimm and in his sense refers only to Germanic philology. However, the term is sometimes applied to other language groups to designate phenomena which are not really analogous. For example, Hebrew irregular verbs are sometimes called weak verbs because one of their radicals is weak. See: weak inflection.
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