Gothic Strong Verbs

	Infinitive	Past Singular	Past Plural	Past Participle	Meaning
Class I	reisan (i:)	rais (ai)	risum (i)	risans (i)	E. rise
Class VI	faran	fōr	fōrum	farans	E. go
Class VII	haitan	haihait	haihaitum	haitans	E. call

The terms «strong» and «weak» verbs belong to J.Grimm. He called the verbs that had preserved the richness of form (since the age of the parent language) strong, and in this sense, they could be contrasted to weak verbs lacking such variety of form. From the verbs the terms were extended to noun and adjective declensions.

Strong verbs, though typical of the Germanic languages, can be found in other languages as well, е.g.

R несу, нёс, Gk leipo (I leave), lepoipa (I have left).

But weak verbs, forming the past tense by adding a dental suffix, i.e. a suffix containing the sound [d] or [t], are not found outside the Germanic group.

Naturally, linguists are interested in the origin of the dental suffix, the most essential feature of these verbs. So far, opinions differ. One point of view is that the dental suffix is an outgrowth of the verb to do (OE. don, G. tun), which seems to have been used as an auxiliary verb of the past tense (sth.like work did for worked).

In the course of time this enclitic did is supposed to have developed into the past tense suffix -ed. Cf. the Russian –ся < себя in умывается, the Ukrainian -му < -иму (I take) in писатиму (I shall write). Some facts of the Gothic language confirm this view, which seems plausible. The past tense of the Gt. weak verb hausjan (hear) is hausida (sg) and hausidēdum (pl). The reduplicated suffix –dēdum closely corresponds to the German past plural taten of the verb tun (do).

Another hypothesis is that the dental suffix first developed in the past participle and then spread to the past tense. It seems quite probable, as there are dental consonants in the participial suffixes of many IE languages.Cf

R. разбитый, одетый

L. dictus (said), lectus (read) (the correspondence IE t – Gt d is according to Verner`s law)

This view gives a plausible explanation of the suffix of Germanic past participle, but the transference of this suffix to the past tense does not appear very likely. Nevertheless, it is quite evident that both the verb meaning «do» and the IE participial suffix participated in the formation of the Germanic weak verb system.

The Old Germanic languages had a system of two tenses, present and past, but originally, this distinction was between aspects rather than tenses. Tenses developed much later. There appear to have been three aspects: the continuous, the momentaneous and the resultative. From them the tenses of Germanic strong verbs developed. The continuous aspect yielded the present tense. The momentaneus aspect yielded the past tense. Owing to its twofold nature, the resultative aspect yielded the past tense in the system of strong verbs and the present tense in the system of preterite-present verbs.