Class 7
Class 7, Sweet's "fall conjugation", is not based on an Indo-European ablaut sequence as such; rather, it is the class showing reduplication in Gothic and irregular ablaut patterning in the other branches. It is generally believed that reduplication was once a feature of all Proto-Indo-European perfects, but it was lost in most verbs by Proto-Germanic times due to haplology. However, those verbs whose present and past stem did not differ in ablaut would not have had a marked distinction between present and past, so reduplication was originally retained in those verbs, which are the verbs categorized as class 7. Class 7 did not form a single unified class, but can be split into several subclasses based on the structure of the root. The first three were parallel with the first three classes: 7a was parallel to class 1, class 7b to class 2, and class 7c to class 3.
The following is a general picture of the Proto-Germanic situation as reconstructed by J. Jasanoff. Earlier reconstructions of the 7th class were generally based mostly on Gothic evidence.
| Subclass | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 |
| 7a (-ai-) | haitaną | haitidi | hegait | hegitun | haitanaz |
| 7b (-au-) | hlaupaną stautaną |
hlaupidi stautidi |
heglaup stestaut |
heglupun stestutun |
hlaupanaz stautanaz |
| 7c (-aR-) | haldaną fanhaną |
haldidi fanhidi |
hegald febanh |
heguldun febungun |
haldanaz fanganaz |
| 7d (-ē-) | lētaną sēaną |
lētidi sēidi |
lelōt sezō |
lel-tun sez-un |
lētanaz sēanaz |
| 7e (-ō-) | blōtaną grōaną |
blōtidi grōidi |
beblōt gegrō |
beblut gegr-un |
blōtanaz grōanaz |
The situation sketched above did not last. The later development of class 7 differs markedly between Gothic on one hand, and the Northwest Germanic languages on the other.
Read more about this topic: Germanic Strong Verb
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