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Re: "There can be"

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Monday, April 14, 2008, 15:36
Quoting Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>:

> On Sat, Apr 12, 2008 at 2:21 PM, Douglas Koller <laokou@...> wrote: > > From: Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> > > > > > Welcome to the world of preterite-presents. > > > > Well, that's the first time I've heard them called that. > > I don't remember where I picked up that term, but Wikipedia knows of > it ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preterite-present_verb ). > > > Kinda sorta makes sense, though what *we* learned as "modal auxiliaries" > plus "wissen" change their vowel in the present as you move from sing. to > pl., whereas strong verbs in the preterite do not. > > True. Though apparently more accurate wording is "...whereas strong > verbs in the preterite no longer do"; at least, if I understand this > bit from the WP article correctly: "In the older stages of the > Germanic languages (Old English, Middle High German) the past tense of > strong verbs also showed different ablaut grades in singular and > plural."
Written Swedish had this well into the 20th century, eg. _jag sprang, vi sprungo_ "I ran, we ran" (today simply _jag sprang, vi sprang_). In speech they were mostly gone generations earlier. -- Andreas Johansson

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Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>