In the Germanic languages, weak verbs are by far the largest group of verbs, and are therefore often regarded as the norm (the regular verbs). They are distinguished from the Germanic strong verbs by the fact that their past tense form is marked by an inflection containing a , , or sound (as in English I walk~I walked) rather than by changing the verb's root vowel (as in English I rise~I rose).
Whereas the strong verbs are the oldest group of verbs in Germanic, originating in Indo-European, the weak verbs arose as an innovation in Proto-Germanic. Originally the weak verbs consisted of new verbs coined from pre-existing nouns (for example the noun name was turned into the verb to name), or coined from strong verbs to express the sense of causing the action denoted by that strong verb (for example the strong verb to rise was turned into the weak verb to raise).
However, over time, the weak verbs have become the normal form of verbs in all Germanic languages, with most strong verbs being reassigned to the weak class. For example, in Old English the verb to lock () was strong (present tense 'I lock', past tense 'I locked'), but has now become weak. This transition is ongoing. For example, the English verb to cleave currently exists in both a conservative strong form (past tense I clove) and an innovative weak form (past tense I cleaved~I cleft).
General description In Germanic languages, weak verbs form their preterites and past participles by means of a dental suffix, an inflection that contains a or sound or similar. (For comparative purposes, they will be referred to as a dental, but in some of the languages, including most varieties of English, and are alveolar instead.) In all Germanic languages, the preterite and past participle forms of weak verbs are formed from the same stem.
Infinitive Preterite English (regular) to love loved to laugh laughed English (irregular) to say said to send sent to buy bought to set set German (love) (bring)
Historically, the pronunciation of the suffix in the vast majority of weak verbs (all four classes) was but, in most sources discussing Proto-Germanic, it is spelled by convention. In the West Germanic languages, the suffix hardened to , but it remained a fricative in the other early Germanic languages (Gothic and often in Old Norse).
In the English language, the dental is a after a voiced consonant (loved) or vowel (laid), a after a voiceless consonant (laughed), and after the dentals/alveolars and themselves, but English uses the suffix spelling regardless of pronunciation, with the exception of a few verbs with irregular spellings.
In Dutch, and are distributed as in English provided there is a following vowel. When there is no following vowel, terminal devoicing leads to the universal . Nevertheless, Dutch still distinguishes between the spellings in and even in final position: see the 't kofschip rule.
In Afrikaans, which descends from Dutch, the past tense has fallen out of use altogether, and the past participle is marked only with the prefix . Therefore, the suffix has disappeared along with the forms that originally contained it.
In German the dental is always and always spelled because of the third phase of the High German consonant shift (d→t).
In Low German, the dental ending of the preterite tense was originally or , according to the stem of the verb. However the ending has fallen out in pronunciation, starting in the 17th century when the preterite was written with the ending representing the sound , which was already the last remnant of the former -de and -te endings of Middle Low German. Now, the only Low German verbs that still show a remnant of a dental ending are , which has the preterite , and the verb , which has with old r-ending from the Middle Low German dental.
In Icelandic, the dental was originally a voiced dental fricative . It is preserved as such after vowels, voiced fricatives, and but has been hardened to a stop after nasals and . It and has been devoiced to after voiceless consonants and in some other cases (in most Old Norse texts, the alternation is already found in heavy roots, but the light ones preserve ). Furthermore, the voicing contrast between and has been replaced in modern Icelandic by an aspiration contrast, which may not be realized phonetically in all the relevant positions.
The situation of early Norwegian was similar to Icelandic, but intervocalic eventually disappeared. In the verbs in which it remains, the dental is or , depending on conjugation class and dialect. It is spelled accordingly. In Nynorsk, it can be different in the preterite and the past participle.
Swedish has a similar situation to that of Norwegian, but the dental is retained in the spelling, even between vowels. Some informal spellings indicate a lost dental, such as in ("said") from the standard spelling .
Classes of verbs In Proto-Germanic, there were seven types of weak verbs, five of which were common. However, they are normally grouped into four classes, based on the conjugational system of Gothic.
Class I verbs Class I verbs actually consist of three classes in Proto-Germanic:
Class I, subclass (i) A small class of verbs had no suffix in the present, and no suffix in the past (other than the -d- or -t- of all weak verbs). This class had only three members:
"to bring", past tense . This verb was continued as such in all the descendants, although an alternate stem occasionally appeared in some of the West Germanic languages (e.g., Old English ). "to use", past tense . This verb tended to move into other classes. For example, in Gothic this verb moved into subclass (ii) of Class I (, past ), whereas in Old English it became a Class II strong verb (, past tense ← ). "to dwell", past tense . This verb continued as such in most descendants but became a Class III weak verb in Gothic.
Class I, subclass (ii) A small class of verbs had the suffix -j- in the present and no suffix in the past. This class had only five members in Proto-Germanic:
"to buy," past tense "to seek," past tense (given a regularized subclass (iii) past in Gothic) "to think," past tense "to seem," past tense "to work," past tense
Verbs of this class were said to undergo rückumlaut ("reverse umlaut") in the past, since the umlaut occurring in the present (triggered by the -j-) is undone or "reversed" in the past (due to the lack of the umlaut-triggering stem -i- of subclass [iii]), leading to a non-umlauted vowel in the past.
These verbs also have consonant and vowel alternations between present and past that are due to regular sound changes but result in strikingly different forms in the historical Germanic languages (e.g., think, past tense thought). Specifically: There is an alternation between -k- or -g- in the present and -h- in the past, caused by the -t- of the past-tense suffix. Prior to the operation of Grimm's Law, the stem consonant was -g- or -gʰ-. Before -t-, the consonant was devoiced to -k- by assimilation and then became -h- by Grimm's Law. This alternation is sometimes called Primärberührung. -n- before -h- disappeared after nasalizing the previous vowel. When the -n- disappeared, the vowel was lengthened by the process of compensatory lengthening. -u- was lowered to -o- in the past tense due to a-mutation, since the following vowel was always non-high.
The class remained small in Gothic, but expanded significantly in the other languages:
In Old Norse, all short-stem verbs (those with a short vowel followed by at most one consonant, or a long vowel followed by no consonant) appeared to move into this class, as indicated by the fact that no umlaut occurs in the past, as would be caused by a suffix -i-. However, this may have been due to a regular sound change that eliminated unstressed, nonfinal short vowels coming after a short stem before the operation of umlaut. In Old High German, short-stem verbs ending in -zz (-tz), -pf, -ck (Proto-Germanic root ending in *-t, -p, or -k), and optionally those in -ll, join this class. For example, "to tell" < , past tense . A number of long-stem verbs also join this class, like "to burn," past tense ; "to turn," past tense . In Old English and the other northern West Germanic languages, a number of verbs ending in -(c)c- and -ll- joined the class, including the following Old English verbs: "to shake" < , past tense < "to afflict," past tense "to seize" (based on earlier ?), past tense "to moisten," past tense "to reach" < , past tense < "to narrate," past tense "to care for" (based on earlier ?), past tense "to teach," past tense "to stretch," past tense "to cover," past tense "to awake," past tense "to kill" < , past tense < "to dwell," past tense "to give, sell," past tense "to place," past tense "to tell," past tense
In Late Old English, further verbs in -can were drawn into this class by analogy, but with umlaut maintained, e.g., "to deceive", past tense , earlier , or "to warm," past tense , earlier . At the same time, verbs in -ccan were modified to follow the same pattern, as in the new past tense form alongside earlier .
Class I, subclass (iii) A large class of verbs had the suffix -j- in the present and -i- in the past, for example, Gothic "to set" (Old English ) and sandjan "to send" (Old English ). As shown in the Old English cognates: The -j- produced umlaut of the stem vowel in languages other than Gothic. The -j- caused West Germanic gemination in the West Germanic languages in short-stem verbs ending in a consonant other than -r. The -j- resulted in palatalization of preceding velar consonants in Old English. The -j- remained in Gothic and Old Saxon, but disappeared in the other languages: In long-stem verbs in Old Norse, and in all verbs except those in -r in the remaining West Germanic languages. (In Old High German, it deflected *-jan into *-jen before disappearing, leaving the suffix -en. This phenomenon, which resembles the usual umlaut of a in syllables preceding j, is nevertheless distinct and must have happened later, as the missing j also caused umlaut.)
This class was split into two subclasses in all the Old Germanic languages, one consisting of short-stem verbs and one of long-stem verbs. The distinction between the two was originally due to Sievers' Law, and was extended due to changes such as West Germanic gemination, which affected short-stem but not long-stem verbs. The West Germanic languages had a third subclass consisting of short-stem verbs ending in -r (e.g., Old English "to plow," "to save," "to stir"), due to West Germanic gemination and subsequent loss of -j- not taking place.
The following is a cross-language paradigm of a short-stem Class I verb "to anger" (Gothic , Old Norse , Old High German , Old Saxon , Old English , Old Frisian ). Note that the Old Saxon and Old Frisian verbs given here are unattested, almost certainly due to the small nature of the respective corpora.
Gothic Old Norse Old High German Old Saxon Old English Old Frisian Infinitive Pres. gremeþ colspan="5" rowspan="2" Pres. subj. colspan="5" rowspan="2" Past colspan="5" rowspan="2" Past subj. colspan="5" rowspan="2" Imper. colspan="5" rowspan="2" colspan="3" colspan="5" Pres. participle Past participle
The following is a cross-language paradigm of a long-stem Class I verb "to hear" (Gothic , Old Norse , Old High German , Old Saxon , Old English , Old Frisian )
Gothic Old Norse Old High German Old Saxon Old English Old Frisian Infinitive hēra Pres. colspan="5" rowspan="2" Pres. subj. colspan="5" rowspan="2" Past colspan="5" rowspan="2" Past subj. colspan="5" rowspan="2" Imper. colspan="5" rowspan="2" colspan="3" colspan="5" Pres. participle Past participle
Class II verbs Class II verbs were formed with a suffix -ō-. In the northern West Germanic languages, an alternative extended suffix -ōja- sometimes appears in the non-past forms, e.g., the Old English infinitive .