- •Contents
- •Unit 2: The Comparative Method ………………………..8 Unit 3: The First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law ………………………10
- •Unit 1 The Indo-European Family
- •Centum and Satem Groups of ie Languages
- •Unit 2 The Comparative Method
- •Unit 3 The First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law
- •Exceptions to Grimm’s law:
- •Unit 4 The Accent Shift and Verner’s Law
- •Rhotacism
- •The Palatal Mutation
- •Unit 6 The Early Germans
- •The Life and Social Organization of the Germans
- •The Great Migration
- •Unit 7 Ancient Germanic Tribes and Their Classification
- •The Proto-Germanic Language
- •Unit 8 The East Germanic Group The Goths
- •Ulfilas and the Gothic Bible
- •Unit 9 The North Germanic Group
- •Unit 10 Northern Mythology
- •The Joys of Valhalla
- •Thor and the Other Gods
- •The Death of Balder
- •Unit 11 The West Germanic Group
- •Unit 12 Old English
- •Three Periods of the History of English
- •Unit 13 Old English Alphabet and Pronunciation
- •Diphthongs
- •Consonants in Old English
- •Unit 14 Some Phonetic Changes of the Old English Period
- •Stressed Vowels
- •Oe Fracture, or Breaking
- •II. Unstressed Vowels
- •III. Consonants
- •Palatalization of Velar Consonants
- •Voicing and Unvoicing of Fricatives
- •Metathesis
- •IV. Word Stress
- •Unit 15 The Noun Grammatical Categories
- •Declensions
- •Unit 16 The Adjective
- •The Weak Declension
- •D. Other classes of pronouns
- •Unit 18 The Verb
- •Mutation or Umlaut
- •The Grammatical Forms and Categories of the Verb
- •Unit 19 Strong Verbs
- •Weak Verbs
- •To Class III belong only four verbs:
- •Preterite-Present Verbs
- •Irregular Verbs
- •Unit 20 The Middle English Period Early Middle English
- •Changes in the Orthographic System
- •Unit 21 Middle English Phonetic Changes
- •Consonants
- •Unstressed Vowels
- •Stressed Vowels
- •Quantitative Changes
- •Qualitative Changes
- •Monophthongs
- •New Diphthongs
- •Unit 22 Middle English Morphology Nouns
- •Articles
- •Pronouns
- •Adjectives
- •Unit 23 The Formation of the National English Language
- •The Great Vowel Shift (gvs)
- •Unit 25 The Mood
- •Conjugation of Strong Verbs
- •Conjugation of Weak Verbs
- •Unit 26 Development of the System of Verbids and Their Grammatical Categories
- •Unit 27 Syntactic Structure
- •Unit 28
- •Varieties of English
- •Unit 29 Etymological Composition of the English Vocabulary
- •Unit 30 The connection of the history of the English language with the history of the English people
Weak Verbs
The group of weak verbs was more numerous than that of strong verbs. Their number was constantly growing since all new verbs derived from other stems were conjugated weak. Among weak verbs there were many derivatives of OE nouns and adjective stems [Rastorgueva, 2001].
-
OE talu n
tellan v
(NE tale, tell)
OE full adj.
fyllan v
(NE full, fill)
Weak verbs form their preterite tense and the past participle by means of a suffix containing d or t. These are the verbs with no stem-vowel changes in any tense. They are grouped into three classes:
To Class II belong verbs whose principal parts end in – ian, –ode, –od:
Infinitive
Preterite
Past Participle
lufian (love)
lufode
lufod
rīcsian (rule)
rīcsode
rīcsod
To Class III belong only four verbs:
secgan (say)
sægde
sægd
habban (have)
hæfde
hæfd
libban (live)
lifde
lifd
hycgan (think)
hogde
(hogod)
All other weak verbs belong to Class I, with several subdivisions, e.g.
-
nerian (save)
nerede
nered
timbran (build)
timbrede
timbred
dēman (judge)
dēmde
dēmed
sellan (give)
sealde
seald
sēcan (seek)
sōhte
sōht
wyrcan (work)
worhte
worht
The personal endings of the Present Indicative are as follows [dēman (to judge); timbran (to build); lufian (to love); erian (plough), sēcan (seek)].
-
1st
2nd
1.
–e
–ie
dēme
timbre
lufie
erie
2.
–(e)st
–ast
dēmst
timbrest
lufast
erest
3.
–(e)þ
–aþ
dēmþ
timbreþ
lufaþ
ereþ
1 – 3.
–aþ
–iaþ
dēmaþ
timbraþ
lufiaþ
eriaþ
most of the weak verbs of Class I with a long root -syllable
some weak verbs of Class I (hyngran; seglan; frefran)
all weak verbs of Class II
all weak verbs of Class I ending
in – ian
The personal endings of the Preterite Indicative of weak verbs are identical for the three classes:
1. |
- e |
lufode |
dēmde |
timbrede |
erede |
sōhte |
2. |
- est |
lufodest |
dēmdest |
timbredest |
erede |
sōhtest |
3. |
- e |
lufode |
dēmde |
timbrede |
erede |
sōhte |
1 – 3. |
-on |
lufodon |
dēmdon |
timbredon |
eredon |
sōhton |