Re: "There can be"

Hi!

Andreas Johansson  writes:
> Quoting Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>:
>>...
>> 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.
Modern Dutch has this for a few strong verbs, while German, with very
similar forms, has dropped it.  Probably it is the same phenomenon:

      I   saw         we  saw
      ich sah  /a:/   wir sahen  /a:/
      ik  zag  /a/    wij zagen  /a:/
                ^-short

IIRC, there is no such length pair (except maybe totally irregular
verbs) in the present tense.

I wonder whether a verb form in my native dialect of German has
related reasons, or is different.  The problem is that it is in the
present tense, not the past tense:

                he says      we  say
                er sagt      wir sagen
 standard:         /a:/      /a:/
 my dialect:       /a/       /a:/
                    ^-short

This is not a general rule, but it is part of the verb paradigm, e.g.,
there is no difference in the following verb:

                he asks      we  ask
                er fragt     wir fragen
 standard:         /a:/      /a:/
 my dialect:       /a:/      /a:/

Any ideas?

**Henrik

Reply