Strong Verbs.

The seven classes of OE strong verbs underwent multiple grammatical and phonetic changes.

In ME the final syllables of the stems, like all final syllables, were weakened, in Early NE most of them were lost. Thus the OE endings -an, -on, and -en (of the 1st, 3rd and 4th principal forms) were all reduced to ME -en; consequently in Classes 6 and 7, where the infinitive and the participle had the same gradation vowel, these forms fell together; in Classes 1 and 3a it led to the coincidence of the 3rd and 4th principal forms. In the ensuing period, the final -n was lost in the infinitive and the past tense plural, but was sometimes preserved in Participle II, probably to distinguish the participle from other forms. Thus, despite phonetic reduction, -n was sometimes retained to show an essential grammatical distinction, cf. NE stole — stolen, spoke — spoken, but bound — bound.

In ME and Early NE the root-vowels in the principal forms of all the classes of strong verbs underwent the regular changes of stressed vowels. Due to phonetic changes vowel gradation in Early ME was considerably modified. Lengthening of vowels before some consonant sequences split the verbs of Class 3 into two subgroups: verbs like findan had now long root-vowels in all the forms; while in verbs like drinken the root-vowel remained short. Thus ME writen and finden (Classes 1 and 3) had the same vowel in the infinitive but different vowels in the Past and Participle II. Participle II of Classes 2, 4 and 6 acquired long root-vowels [o:] and [a:] due to lengthening in open syllables, while in the Participle with Class 1 — the vowel remained short. These phonetic changes made the interchange less consistent and justified than before, for instance, verbs with long [i:] in the first stem (writen, finden) would, for no apparent reason, use different interchanges to form the other stems.

At the same time there was a strong tendency to make the system of forms more regular. The strong verbs were easily influenced by anal­ogy. It was due to analogy that they lost practically all consonant interchanges in ME and Early NE.

The most important change in the system of strong verbs was the reduction in the number of stems from four to three, by removing the distinction between the two past tense stems. In OE these stems had the same gradation vowels only in Classes 6 and 7, but we should recall that the vast majority of English verbs — which were weak — had a single stem for all the past forms. These circumstances facilitated analogical levelling, which occurred largely in Late ME. Its direction depended on the dialect, and on the class of the verb.

The tendency to reduce the number of stems continued in Early NE. At this stage it affected the distinction between the new Past tense stem and Participle II. Identical forms of these stems are found not only in the literary texts and private letters but even in books on English grammar: thus Ben Jonson (1640) recommends beat and broke as correct forms of Participle II; Shakespeare uses sang and spoke both as Past tense forms and Participle II.

This tendency was severely criticised by the lexicographers and grammarians of the “age of correctness” (18^th c.).

One of the most important events in the history of the strong verbs was their transition into weak.

In OE there were about three hundred strong verbs. Some of them dropped out of use owing to changes in the vocabulary, while most of the remaining verbs became weak. Out of 195 OE strong verbs, preserved in the language, only 67 have retained strong forms with root-vowel interchanges roughly corresponding to the OE gradation series. 128 verbs acquired weak forms; most of these verbs belong nowadays to “regular” or “standard” verbs. The number of new verbs, which joined the classes of strong verbs, was very small — several former weak verbs, e.g. NE wear, dig, stick and three borrowings — take, thrive (from O Scand), strive (from O Fr).

The changes in the formation of principal parts of strong verbs extended over a long period — from the 12th to 18th c. It is natural that during this period — especially in the 14th-17th c. many parallel forms were used in free variation.