Re: irregularities

Well for modern German of course... I was
thinking of English, sorry.  And of the origins
of English verbs in Old English.  Thencan,
brengan, bycgan, etc. are "anomalies" in the OE
development of Class III weak verbs, so
I suppose you could call them "irregular."
But there were so many irregularities and
departures from common paradigms (the
preterite present verbs for example?) that the
term gets confusing--that is, if you want to
think of the developments of modern English
or German, which you should be, if you want
to develop "irregularities" or alternative
formations in your conlang.

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net


----- Original Message -----
From: Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2001 8:03 AM
Subject: Re: irregularities


> Sally Caves wrote:
> > > If I remember my numbers correctly, English has 168 irregular verbs.
And
> > > those are just the ones we use *now*. There are all sorts of archaic
> > > irregulars that are no longer used but heavily attested.
> > >
> > > My favorite irregular series in English:
> > >
> > > think-thought
> > > bring-brought
> > > buy-bought
> > > work-wrought (the old usage)
> >
> >Some of these are actually curious formations of the *weak* verb.
> >Thencan /thohte are what they call "verbs without middle vowels."
> >They are Class I weak verbs that show ablaut change in the
> >preterite and past participle but because of the change of
> >c/g before d to "ht" they exhibit a modified version of the
> >dental ending.
> >
> >You know, "irregular" verbs is a modern concept.  These
> >verbs, with the exception of the above, were made from
> >Germanic "strong verbs," the prevalent form then (with
> >ablaut change to express the preterite and PP).  Weak
> >verbs, which became our "regular" verbs, were the ones
> >formed by a dental ending.  By analogy, a lot of our strong
> >verbs went weak:  "helpan, healp, hulpen, holpen" -- help
> >helped helped.
> >
> > > I like them primarily because they are so transparently cognate with
> >German:
> > >
> > > denken-dachte-gedacht
> > > bringen-brachte-gebracht
> > > (kaufen and arbeiten are no longer part of the series)
> >
> >Because of the same formation in proto-Germanic.
> >
> > > I think that I'll add a web page about irregular verbs in English and
> > > German when I've got the time.
> >
> >Hope this information helps you.  It would be best to talk
> >about strong and weak verbs rather than "regular" and
> >"irregular."
>
> Hm, when I read German (approx 1995-2000), we were taught to refer to
verbs
> like _denken_ and _bringen_ as "irregular". The term "strong" was reserved
> for verbs like _kommen_ and _helfen_ (that keep the stem consonants
> unchanged in inflected forms).
>
> What were our Germans on the list told about this in their schools?
>
>                                                   Andreas
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