Old English New English

rise – rose – risen

First class rīsan – rās – rison – risen

Bītan – bāt – biton – bitten

bite – bit – bitten

2) Some strong verbs of one class entering another class. Thus, the Old English verb of the 5^th class:

Sprecan – spræcon – sprǽcon – sprecen

passed into the 5^th class in Middle English with the forms:

speken – spak – speken – spoken

on analogy with such verbs as:

stelen – stal – stelen – stolen

3) Passing of some strong verbs into the group of weak verbs and (rarely) vice versa. For example:

Old English New English

I class gripan to grip

glidan to glide

II class crēopan to creep

Lēoзan to lie

III class climban to climb

Helpan to help

IV class bacan to bake

wæcnan to wake

The contrary process, as we have already said, is quite rare:

Old English New English

hŷdan to hide

wærian to wear

4) But some weak verbs acquired only some features of the strong verbs, like the Old English weak verb scēawian – Modern English show, showed, but shown.

Principal forms of the strong verbs

The strong verbs in Old English had four principal forms, for example:

writan – wrāt – writon – written (to write)

bindan – band – bundon – bunden (to shake)

In Middle English, however, they exhibited a marked tendency to have the same vowel in both the forms of the past tense, thus gradually reducing the number of the principal forms to three. In New English we have only three principal forms in verbs originally belonging to the group of strong verbs:

write – wrote – written

The vowel that is preserved in the past tense is generally traced back to the vowel of Old English past tense singular. For example:

Old English Middle English New English

I class wrāt wrōt wrote (to write)

II class scōc shōk shook (to shake)

But sometimes it is the vowel of the original past tense plural:

Old English bitan – bāt – biton – bitten

Middle English bitten – bot – bitten – bitten

New English bite – bit – bitten

with the past tense form deriving its vowel from the past tense plural form of the verb.

Sometimes the vowel of the past tense form was borrowed from the form of the past participle:

Old English stelan – stæl - stǽlon –stolen

Middle English stelen – stal – stelen – stolen

New English steal – stolen – stolen

Weak verbs

As we have said above the number of strong verbs was diminishing in Middle English and New English mainly due to the passing of some strong verbs into the weak conjugation. Weak verbs, however, were becoming more and more numerous, as they not only preserved in Middle and New English almost all the verbs that were typical of the group in Old English, but also added to their group the majority of borrowed verbs and about seventy originally strong, and also such verbs as:

to call

to want Scandinavian borrowings

to guess

to pierce

to punish French borrowings

to finish

to contribute

to create Latin borrowings

to distribute

Alike strong verbs many weak verbs became irregular in the course of history, especially weak verbs of the first class. This irregularity was mainly conditioned by qualitative and quantitative changes that many weak verbs underwent in Middle and new English. For example:

Old English cēpan – cēpte – cēpte – cēpt

Middle English kēpen – kepte – kept

New English keep – kept – kept

As we see the Old English weak verb of the first class became irregular due to the quantitative change – shortening of the vowel in the second and third forms in Middle English (before two consonants – for example, pt), thus acquiring quantitative vowel interchange. This quantitative interchange was followed by qualitative in New English after the Great Vowel Shift, which only the vowel of the first form, being long underwent, the short vowel of the second and third forms retaining their quality.