OE weak verbs and their further development

W.v. form their Preterit and Participle2 by addition of a dental suffix (d/t) –love, loved. Weak verbs form the majority of OE verbs. There are three major classes of weak verbs in OE. The first class displays i-mutation in the root. The verbs of Class I usually were i-stems, originally contained the element [-i/-j] between the root and the endings. The verbs of Class II were built with the help of the stem-suffix -ō, or -ōj and are known as ō-stems. Class III was made up of a few survivals of the PG. Third and fourth classes of weak verbs, mostly -ǽj-stems.

Each Wv. is characterized by 3 basic forms: infinitive, Preterit and a participle 2.

Development:

1. The division of weak verbs into classes was based on the original stem-building suffix of a verb that was already hard to distinguish even in OE: 1st class: OE (stem-suffix –j)> ME (most verbs – with front root-vowel)> NE (derived from nouns, adjectives); 2nd class: OE (stem-suffix –oja)>ME (most numerous class)>NE (most verbs – with back root-vowel); 3rd class: OE, ME, NE (3 verbs only: habban (to have), libban (to live), secζan (to say)).

2. Weak verbs were not as complex as strong ones and had a greater regularity and simplicity. That’s why they were productive, i.e. all borrowed verbs used weak model of form-building (suffix -t/-d) (e.g. Scand. to skate, Fr. to charm, Lat. to decorate, etc.) and, as it has already been mentioned above, many originally strong verbs turned into weak (e.g. to bake, to laugh, to help, to lie, etc.). The opposite process of turning of weak verbs into strong was very rare and was mainly based on phonetic similarity between some strong and weak verbs, i.e. was a result of mere confusion that later was accepted as a norm due to its persistent and regular character (e.g. to wear was originally weak and became strong because of the mistaken analogy with to swear, to ring (mistaken analogy with to sing), to hide (mistaken analogy with to ride)).