Grammatischer Wechsel - Between Strong Verbs and Derived Causatives

Between Strong Verbs and Derived Causatives

In PIE, causative verbs (meaning "to cause to") were derived from verb roots with a suffix *-éye-, and the root vowel was changed to the o-grade. Verbs with this suffix eventually became part of the first weak class (*-jan verbs). This suffix always bore the accent, and the verb root never did, while in regular strong verbs the verb root was accented in the present tense. This caused Verner alternation between the original verbs and the causative verbs derived from them.

Examples are numerous in the older languages, but are less frequent today because some levelling has occurred, and in some cases one verb or the other was lost.

Original /*p/ (no examples)

Original /*t/

Modern German: leiden ("to suffer, to undergo", originally "to go", from *līþanan) – leiten ("to lead", from *laidijanan)

Original /*k/

Icelandic: hlæja ("to laugh", from *hlahjanan) – hlægja ("to make laugh", from *hlōgijanan)

Original /*kʷ/ No attested examples within a single language, but compare:

Gothic þreihan ("to press", from *þrinhwanan) – German drängen ("to push", from *þrangwijanan)

Original /*s/

English rise (from *rīsanan) – rear (from *raizijanan)
German genesen ("to heal", from *ganesanan) – nähren ("to feed", from *nazjanan)

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