In Germanic languages, weak verbs are by far the largest group of verbs, which are therefore often regarded as the norm, though historically they are not the oldest or most original group. This article does not cite its references or sources. ...

For other aspects of the verb in Germanic languages see the article Germanic verb.

The Germanic language family is one of the language groups which resulted from the breakup of Proto-Indo-European (PIE). ...

General description

In Germanic languages, weak verbs are those verbs that form their preterites and past participles by means of a dental suffix, an inflection that contains a /t/ or /d/ sound or similar. For example: The preterite (also praeterite, in American English also preterit, or past historic) is the grammatical tense expressing actions which took place in the past. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ... Look up affix in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

• to love - loved
• to say - said
• to send - sent
• to buy - bought
• to set - set
• to lean - leaned or leant

For comparative purposes we may refer to this generally as a dental, although in some of the languages, including English, /t/ and /d/ are alveolar rather than dental consonants. In English, the dental is a /d/ after a voiced consonant or vowel, and a /t/ after a voiceless consonant, though English uses the spelling in <d> in most cases, regardless of pronunciation. In German and Dutch, terminal devoicing means that final consonants are never voiced, so the pronunciation /d/ does not occur. Nevertheless, Dutch distinguishes the letters <d> and <t> regularly as though the originally voiced consonants were still voiced. (See Dutch spelling for the 't kofschip rule.) German on the other hand knows only spellings in <t>. In Icelandic, the dental has become a voiced dental fricative /ð/, as it was in some verbs in Old English. In Afrikaans it has disappeared altogether. A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In phonetics, a voiceless consonant is a consonant that does not have voicing. ... The introduction of this article does not provide enough context for readers unfamiliar with the subject to understand later context. ... Dutch orthography uses the Latin alphabet according to a system which has evolved to suit the needs of the Dutch language. ... Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) is an early form of the English language that was spoken in parts of what is now England and southern Scotland between the mid-fifth century and the mid-twelfth century. ... Look up Wiktionary:Swadesh lists for Afrikaans and Dutch in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Origins of the weak conjugation

The weak conjugation of verbs is an innovation of Proto-Germanic (unlike Germanic strong verbs, the basis of which goes back to Proto-Indo-European). Only primary verbs (those not derived) took a perfect form, which was the basis of the Germanic strong preterite, so secondary verbs had to form a preterite otherwise; this necessitated the creation of the weak conjugation. Map of the Pre-Roman Iron Age culture(s) associated with Proto-Germanic, c. ... A strong inflection is an irregular inflection, in which the stem of a word changes. ... Proto-Indo-European (PIE) may refer to: Proto-Indo-European language the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language Proto-Indo-European roots, A list of reconstructed Proto-Indo-European roots Categories: | ...

The vast majority of weak verbs are secondary, or derived. The two main types of derived verbs were denominative and deverbative. The denominative in Indo-European and early Germanic was formed by adding an ablauting thematic *-y^é/_ó- suffix to a noun or adjective. This created verbs such as Gothic namnjan 'to name'. A deverbative verb is one created from another verb, and for Germanic was almost exclusively made by changing the vowel of the root to o-grade and adding the causative/iterative *-éy^e/_o- suffix. For example, the causative deverbative based on the English verb to sit is to set, which originally meant, "to cause to sit". Gothic shows a more archaic form in its infinitive satjan < *sodeyo- < *sed- 'sit'. In both varieties, the -y- component remains most often in Gothic (written as <j>), but in all applicable cases it caused i-mutation in the other Germanic languages (this explains the vowel in English set : Gothic sat-). Vowel stems, in Indo-European linguistics, are the stems of nouns or verbs that are thematic. ... Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. ... I-mutation is what umlaut is called when it applies to English. ...

There are primary verbs that date to Indo-European that took a weak conjugation because they were unable to take a perfect, including verbs that had zero grade of the root in the present and were therefore unable to show the ablaut distinction necessary for a strong preterite. This was the case with the verbs waurkjan 'to work, create', bugjan 'to buy', and sokjan 'to seek' (Gothic forms).

Source of the dental suffix

Periphrastic origin

The origin of the dental suffix is uncertain. Perhaps the most commonly-held theory is that it evolved out of a periphrastic construction with the verb to do': Germanic *lubōjana dēdo ("love-did") → *lubōdo → Old English lufode → loved. This would be analogous to the way that in Modern English we can form an emphatic past tense with "did": I did love. Periphrasis is a figure of speech where the meaning of a word or phrase is expressed by many or several words. ...

The common PIE root dheH₁- meaning 'do' was a root aorist, and as such did not take a perfect. It did, however, take a reduplicating present. The imperfect of this root is taken by many to be the origin of the dental suffix. Aorist (from Greek αοριστος, indefinite) is a term used in certain Indo-European languages to refer to a particular grammatical tense and/or aspect. ...

This view is not without objections. These are two often-proposed difficulties with this explanation:

• Gothic -e- in the plural is long, but PGmc is short.
• Reduplication is only in the Gothic plural.

These objections are sometimes answered as follows:

• There might have been a refashioning according to cases like gēbun, viz. *gegbun > gēbun : *dedun → dēdun.
• Reduplication only in the plural can easily be explained by haplology in Proto-Germanic (i.e., *dede- being reduced to *de-) for the singular, with a later development of haplology for the plural in non-East Germanic languages.

Haplology is defined as the elimination of a syllable when two consecutive identical or similar syllables occur. ... The East Germanic languages are a group of extinct Indo-European languages in the Germanic family. ...

Participial origin

Another theory is that it came from a past participle ending, a final *-daz from PIE *-tos (cf Latin amatus), with personal endings added to it at a later stage. This theory is also disputed because of its inability to explain all the facts.

Weak and strong

Weak verbs should be contrasted with strong verbs, which form their past tenses by means of ablaut. Most verbs in the early stages of the Germanic languages were strong. However, as the ablaut system is no longer productive except in rare cases of analogy, almost all new verbs in Germanic languages are weak, and the majority of the original strong verbs have become weak by analogy. In some cases a verb has become weak in the preterite but not in the participle, or (rarely) vice versa. These verbs may be thought of as "semi-strong" (not a technical term). Dutch has a number of examples of this: A strong inflection is an irregular inflection, in which the stem of a word changes. ... In linguistics, the term ablaut designates a system of vowel gradation (i. ...

• wassen waste gewassen ("to wash")
• jagen joeg gejaagd ("to hunt")

In Germanic, one very productive source of new verbs was the derivation of new verbs with causative meanings from existing verbs, resulting in many pairs of related strong and weak verbs: the original strong verb fall fell fell has a related weak verb fell felled felled, which means "to cause (a tree) to fall"; strong sit sat sat and lie lay lain are matched with weak set set set and lay laid laid, meaning "to cause something to sit" or "lie" respectively. Occasionally semantic shifts make these pairs difficult to recognise. German strong leiden litt gelitten ("to suffer") has the derived weak verb leiten ("to lead"), which makes sense when one realises that leiden originally meant "walk, go" and came to its present meaning through the idea of "undergoing" suffering.

Historical conjugations

In the medieval Germanic languages, a number of different classes of weak verbs had to be distinguished, according to the consonants in the stem. Class 1 is known as the -jan conjugation, because their development was influenced by a /j/ in Germanic, which however is only attested in Old Saxon. In Old English, class 1 weak verbs commonly had preterites ending in -ede. This group commonly experienced consonant doubling in the infinitive caused by West Germanic Gemination. Class 2 weak verbs typically ended in -ode in Old English. Besides these two main classes there were several smaller ones. Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, is a Germanic language. ... West Germanic Gemination is a sound change that took place in all West Germanic languages, around 300 AD. All single consonants except /r/ were doubled after a short vowel and before /j/; sometimes also before /w/, /r/, and /l/. A similar change occurred in the history of Old Norse, but...

Modern paradigms

In the modern languages, these distinctions have mostly been levelled. Only Frisian has retained two productive classes of weak verbs. In addition to the class with the -de, there is a class of je-verbs, where the dental suffix has dropped ( -je<-iad). The regular weak verbs conjugate as follows:

1. The distinction between the infinitive and present forms of Afrikaans verbs has been lost with the exception of a very few such as wees and is, "to be" and "is/am/are" 2. learn,teach The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Look up Wiktionary:Swadesh lists for Afrikaans and Dutch in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Frisian is a Germanic group of closely related languages, spoken by about half a million members of Frisian ethnic groups living on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. ... Yiddish (&#1497;&#1497;&#1460;&#1491;&#1497;&#1513;, Jiddisch) is a Germanic language spoken by about four million Jews throughout the world. ... In grammar, the infinitive is the form of a verb that has no inflection to indicate person, number, mood or tense. ... The present tense is the tense (form of a verb) that is often used to express: Action at the present time A state of being A habitual action An occurrence in the near future An action that occurred in the past and continues up to the present There are two... The preterite (also praeterite, in American English also preterit, or past historic) is the grammatical tense expressing actions which took place in the past. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ...

Irregularities

Weak verbs are often thought of as having a regular inflection, but not all weak verbs are regular verbs; some have been made irregular by ellipsis or contraction, such as hear ~ heard; while others are merely irregular due to the eccentricities of English spelling, such as lay ~ laid. In German, verbs ending in -eln or -ern have slightly different inflection patterns. There are many other examples. The Preterite-present verbs are in a sense weak verbs with very significant irregularities; but usually they are not bracketed under weak verbs. Inflection of the Spanish lexeme for cat, with blue representing the masculine gender, pink representing the feminine gender, grey representing the form used for mixed-gender, and green representing the plural number. ... Ellipsis (plural ellipses; from Greek omission) in linguistics refers to any omitted part of speech that is understood; i. ... In traditional grammar, a contraction is the formation of a new word from two or more individual words. ... English spelling (or orthography), although largely phonemic, has more complicated rules than many other spelling systems used by languages written in alphabetic scripts and contains many inconsistencies between spelling and pronunciation, necessitating rote learning for anyone learning to read or write English. ... The preterite-present verbs are a small group of anomalous verbs in the Germanic languages. ...

One particularly interesting category of irregular weak verb is the so-called rückumlaut verb. This is discussed in the article on Germanic umlaut under the section "Umlaut in Germanic verbs". An original -j- in the inflection caused the whole of the present stem (including the infinitive) to experience a fronting of the stem vowel, though the past tense retains the back vowel. Another irregularity is a consonant alternation sometimes referred to by the German word Primärberührung, which looks superficially like Grammatischer Wechsel but in fact results from the phenomenon of the Germanic spirant law in early Germanic. In effect this is a process of assimilation of the plosive at the end of the stem caused by contact with the dental suffix. Both Rückumlaut and Primärberührung are observable in the verb to think: In linguistics, the process of umlaut (from German um- around + Laut sound) is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a vowel or semivowel in a following syllable. ... In linguistics, the process of umlaut (from German um- around + Laut sound) is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a vowel or semivowel in a following syllable. ... In historical linguistics, the German term Grammatischer Wechsel (grammatical alternation) refers to the effects of Verners law when viewed synchronically within the paradigm of a Germanic verb. ... In linguistics, the Germanic spirant law, sometimes referred to by the German term Primärberührung, is a specific historical instance of assimilation which occurred at an early stage in the history of the Germanic languages and is regarded by some as being early enough to fall into the same...

• English: think thought
• German: denken dachte gedacht

Some grammar books use the term "mixed verb" to describe these. This rests on the misconception that these verbs display both ablaut and a dental suffix, and are therefore at once strong and weak. But the vowel change is not ablaut. In linguistics, the term ablaut designates a system of vowel gradation (i. ...

Other meanings

The term "weak verb" was originally coined by Jakob Grimm and in his sense refers only to Germanic philology. However, the term is sometimes applied to other language groups to designate phenomena which are not really analogous. For example, Hebrew irregular verbs are sometimes called weak verbs because one of their radicals is weak. See: weak inflection. Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm (January 4, 1785 &#8211; September 20, 1863), German philologist and mythologist, was born at Hanau, in Hesse-Kassel. ... In grammar, the term weak (originally coined in German: schwach) is used in opposition to the term strong (stark) to designate a conjugation or declension when a language has two parallel systems. ...