Re: OT: TECH: css (fuit: Re: Critique needed for lessons)

> > > Philip Newton skrev:
> > > > On 5/24/06, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > (Durst I suggest
> > > >
> > > > I thought "durst" was 2sg. only; I would've expected "Dare I suggest" here.
Not so; we find "I durst not do it" in Tolkien.

In OE, "dar" was what is called a "preterit-present" verb; neither
strong nor weak, but a mixture of both.  The ablaut forms that would
normally be the past tense of a strong verb were used in the present
tense instead; as a result, a weak past was formed from a new root.
(This is also how we got "could" as the past tense of "can", for
instance).

In the case of "dar(e)", that weak root was "dorst", so the past tense
became "ic dorste,  þú dorstest,   hé dorste,   wé (etc) dorston".
These all simplified to just "durst" in ME, but as you can see, the
"st" is part of the stem, not a 2sg ending.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>