Grammatischer Wechsel - Within Verb Paradigms

Within Verb Paradigms

Grammatischer Wechsel is the phenomenon that a verb which in PIE had a stem ending in one of these phonemes displays a differing reflex in different parts of the paradigm, a result of the movable nature of accent in PIE. The Germanic past tense derives from the PIE perfect aspect, which was always athematic and therefore almost always had a shift of accent between the singular indicative (where it was on the root syllable) and the remaining forms including the past participle (where it was on the ending). However, the perfect aspect was only present in primary, underived verbs, and any derived verbs therefore lacked perfect forms altogether. These latter verbs formed the base of the Germanic weak verbs, and did not inherit the accent shift, so the alternation itself only affects Germanic strong verbs.

A process of levelling has meant that there are only few examples of this in the modern languages. In East and North Germanic, this levelling was almost complete before the earliest records, though Gothic and Old Norse did have traces of grammatischer Wechsel. In Old English, too, the levelling had already begun to the extent that in some verbs the preterite singular had taken the consonant of the preterite plural. The only surviving example in Modern English is was:were, but a trace can also be seen in the adjective forlorn, which reflects the old participle of the verb to lose. Likewise Modern German has lost most of its examples by levelling, but d:t can be observed in verbs like leiden, litt, gelitten ("to suffer") or h:g in ziehen, zog, gezogen ("to pull"). Apart from the English copula mentioned above, the only occurrences of s:r in the modern languages are in Dutch: for example verliezen, verloor, verloren ("to lose") and verkiezen, verkoos, verkoren ("to choose").

Some examples:

Original /*p/ (no examples in the modern languages)

Old English: hebban – hōf hōfon hafen ("to lift" cf. heave)

Original /*t/ (survives in modern German and archaic English)

Old English: cweþan (cwiþþ) cwæþ – cwǽdon cweden ("to say": cf. quoth)

Old English: sēoþan (sīeþþ) sēaþ – sudon soden ("to boil" cf. seethe)

English (archaic): seethe – sod sodden

Modern German: schneiden – schnitt geschnitten ("to cut")

Original /*k/ (survives in modern German and Dutch)

Middle High German: zîhen zêch – zigen gezigen ("to upbraid")

Old English: þeon (þīehþ) þāh – þigon þigen ("to prosper" cf. German gedeihen)

Original /*kʷ/ (survives in modern English, as original *k in Dutch and earlier German)

Old English: sēon seah – sāwon sewen ("to see", Old English lost intervocalic h)

English: see – saw

Dutch: zien zie gezien – zag zagen ("to see", Dutch lost intervocalic h)

Old High German: sehan sah – sāgun gisehan/gisewan

Swedish: se ser – såg

Original /*s/ (survives in modern Dutch, and in the English and Dutch copula)

Old English: wesan wæs – wæron ("to be")

English: was – were

Old English: cēosan cēas – curon coren ("to choose")

Old English: frēosan frēas – fruron froren ("to freeze")

Dutch: vriezen vries – vroor gevroren ("to freeze")

Dutch: wezen wees was – waren ("to be")

Old Norse (early): vesa vas – váru ("to be", the -s- was soon replaced by -r- analogically)

Old Norse: frjósa frýss – fruru frorinn ("to freeze")

NB. Not all consonant apophony in Germanic verbs is caused by grammatischer Wechsel. The consonant alternation in certain weak verbs which typically goes along with the Rückumlaut phenomenon (think:thought, German denken:dachte) is a result of a later development in Germanic known as the Germanic spirant law. Likewise, the terminal devoicing which produces a fortis-lenis alternation in Dutch (wrijven:wreef) is an unrelated historical phenomenon.