| Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993. |
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| STRONG VERBS 2, WEAK VERBS, THE ORIGIN AND MEANING OF THE TERMS |
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| Jacob Grimm (1785–1863), one of the two fairy-tale–collecting brothers from Germany who were also famous grammarians, chose the names strong verbs and weak verbs for the two dominant patterns of verbs in the Germanic languages. Those he called strong made their past tenses and past participles mainly by changing medial vowels, as do English begin, began, begun and drive, drove, driven. His weak verbs made their tense changes by adding various forms of the dental suffix, as in English study, studied, studied and bake, baked, baked. The irony of the terminology is that strong verbs, more numerous during the Old English period, have been a slowly dwindling group in English over the centuries, while the weak verbs have become the dominant pattern in English. Many verbs that were formerly strong now use the weak pattern, and many more, such as weave, wove, woven, are in the middle of change from strong to weak, currently displaying weak forms in divided usage with strong ones (weave, weaved, weaved). When we borrow or coin new verbs, we almost always put them in the weak pattern (we have recently made a new verb, to fax, and we did it on the weak pattern—fax, faxed, faxed—not with a vowel change for past tense and past participle), and today we have to learn the past and past participle forms of the strong verbs almost word by word (note how very young children first learn the dominant weak pattern for the past tense and say swimmed; only later do they correct to the strong swam). See also STRONG VERBS (1); WEAK VERBS. | 1 |
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| | | The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Copyright © 1993 Columbia University Press. |
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