Weak Inflection - Germanic Grammar

Germanic Grammar

Further information: Germanic weak verb, Germanic strong verb

This terminology seems to have been used first in relation to Germanic verbs. In this context, "strong" indicates those verbs that form their past tenses by ablaut (the vocalic conjugations), "weak" those that need the addition of a dental suffix (the consonantal conjugations). It is only in this context that the term would be applied to modern English.

By extension, the terminology was also applied to Germanic nouns. Here too, the weak noun was the consonantal declension, such as the German nouns that form their genitive in -n. Examples:

standard noun: der Mann, des Mannes - "man".

weak noun (or n-declension): der Junge, des Jungen - "boy".

Although the term "weak noun" is very useful in German grammar to describe this very small and distinctive group, the term "strong noun" is less commonly heard, since it would have to include many other noun types that should not necessarily be grouped together. Some of these have umlaut plurals (die Männer), but most do not.

There are also strong and weak declensions of German adjectives. This differs from the situation in nouns and verbs in that every adjective can be declined using either the strong or the weak declension. As with the nouns, weak in this case means the declension in -n. In this context, the terms "strong" and "weak" seem particularly appropriate, since the strong declension carries more information about case and gender, while the weak declension is used in situations where the definite article already provides this information. Examples:

strong:

guter Wein (nom)

guten Wein (acc)

gutem Wein (dat)

- adjectives signal case with unambiguous inflections.

weak:

der gute Wein (nom)

den guten Wein (acc)

dem guten Wein (dat)

- articles signal case, so adjectives need less inflectional specificity.