Germanic Strong Verb - General Developments

General Developments

Before looking at the seven classes individually it is helpful to consider first the general developments which affected all of them. The following phonological changes are relevant for the discussion of the ablaut system:

From PIE to Germanic

• General sound shifts: o > a ; ei > ī ; oi > ai ; ou > au.
• Elimination of the zero grade before liquids by insertion of u.
• The development of grammatischer Wechsel (variations in the consonant following the ablaut vowel) caused by Verner's law.
• Umlaut - the fronting of the ablaut vowel e to i, caused by i, ī or j in the following syllable. This affects the 2nd and 3rd persons singular of the present tense in classes 2, 3b, 4 and 5.
• Wandel - the same effect as Umlaut, but caused by a nasal or other front consonant in post-vocalic position. This affects the whole of the present stem (including the infinitive) of some verbs in class 3a, and of a few verbs in class 2.

From Germanic to Gothic

• Merger of i and e: e > i in all environments
• High vowel lowering before r, h: i > e (spelled ), u > o (spelled )
• ī was spelled

From Germanic to the north and west Germanic dialects

• Extension of umlaut to back vowels, causing it to apply also to verbs of class 6.
• a-mutation (sometimes wrongly called a-umlaut) - the movement of the ablaut vowel towards the back of the mouth caused by an a in the following syllable. This affects the participle, which had the suffix -an. An intervening nasal + consonant blocked this.

From Germanic to Old English

• General sound shifts: ai > ā ; eu > ēo ; au > ēa
• Breaking before certain consonants: a > ea ; e > eo
• "West Saxon Palatalisation": i > ie after g

From Old English to Modern English

• Great Vowel Shift

From Germanic to Old High German

• General sound shifts: ai > ei ; au > ou
• Sound shift e > i before u
• Old High German monophthongization: ei > ē before Germanic r, h and w; ou > ō before Germanic dentals (þ, d, t, n, l, s, z, r) and h

From Old High German to Modern German

• General sound shifts: io > ī (spelled ) ; ou > au
• MHG diphthongisation: ī > ai (spelled ), ū > au, ȳ > ɔy (spelled or <äu>)
• vowel lengthening in early modern times: i > ī (spelled ) before a single consonant.

From Germanic to early Middle Dutch

• General sound shifts: ai > ē ; au > ō, eu > io > ie, ē2 > ie, ō > ue (usually spelled )
• Sound shifts u > o, ū > ȳ
• Lengthening of vowels in open syllables: e > ē, o > ō, a > ā, but not written. i is lengthened to ē.

From Middle Dutch to Modern Dutch

• Diphthongisation of long high vowels: ī > ei (spelled ), ȳ > œy (spelled )
• Monophthongisation of opening diphthongs: ie > i (still spelled ), ue > u (spelled )

From early Modern Dutch to Afrikaans

• The distinction between strong and weak verbs has been lost in Afrikaans, as all verbs now follow the weak pattern. For example the ancestral Dutch hij heeft gezongen has become hy het gesing ("he sang/has sung/had sung). "He sings" is hy sing; there is no change in vowel sound and it follows the same pattern as hy werk (he works), hy het gewerk (he worked/has worked/had worked). Afrikaans has even lost the inflection that distinguishes the present from the infinitive form of the verb in Dutch.

Other changes in the general shape of the verbs:

• Between PIE and Germanic the verbal noun was adapted as a past participle for the new Germanic synthetic tenses. The emphatic prefix ge- came to be used (but neither exclusively nor invariably) as a marker of the participle. In English this prefix disappeared again in the Middle Ages.
• The development of weak verbs in Germanic meant that the strong verb system ceased to be productive. Practically all new verbs were weak. Gradually many strong verbs became weak, so that the total number of strong verbs in the languages was constantly decreasing. In English, this process has gone further than it has in German or Dutch; one example is the verb to help which used to be conjugated holp-holpen. The reverse phenomenon, whereby a weak verb thus becomes strong by analogy, is rather rare. Some verbs, which might be termed "semi-strong", have formed a weak preterite but retained the strong participle, or rarely vice versa. This type of verb is most common in Dutch:

lachen lachte (formerly loech) gelachen ("to laugh")

vragen vroeg (formerly vraagde) gevraagd ("to ask")

• Idiosyncrasies of the phonological changes led to a growing number of subgroups. Also, once the ablaut system ceased to be productive, there was a decline in the speakers' awareness of the regularity of the system. This leads to anomalous forms. Thus the six big classes lost their cohesion. Again, this process is furthest advanced in English. The reverse process whereby anomalies are eliminated and subgroups reunited by the force of analogy is called "levelling", and can be seen at various points in the history of the verb classes.
• In the later Middle Ages, all three languages eliminated a great part of the old distinction between the vowels of the singular and plural preterite forms. The new uniform preterite could be based on the vowel of the old preterite singular, or on the old plural, or sometimes on the participle. In English, the distinction remains in the verb "to be": I was, we were. In Dutch, it remains in the verbs of classes 4 & 5 but only in vowel length: ik brak (I broke - short a), wij braken (we broke - long ā). In German and Dutch it also remains in the present tense of the preterite presents. In Limburgish there is a little more left. E.g. the preterite of to help is (weer) hólpe for the plural but either (ich) halp or (ich) hólp for the singular.
• In the process of development of English, numerous sound changes and analogical developments have fragmented the classes to the extent that most of them no longer have any coherence -- only classes 1, 3 and 4 still have significant subclasses that follow uniform patterns.