1. The first Germanic consonant shift. Grimm's Law. Verner's Law. The shift of stress

6.Strong verbs in OE.

Strong Verbs

There were about three hundred strong verbs in Old English. They were native verbs of Protogermanic origin and usually have parallels in other Germanic languages. They are divided into seven classes. Gradation in Old English develops from common Indo-European gradation but the vowels differ due to numerous phonetic changes in Germanic languages and then in English, so the vowels may be quite different, but the principle is the same.
Class I Gradation formula: i — a — i — i

writan - wrat — writon - writen (to write) Other verbs of this class are: drifan (to drive), bitan (to bite), stridan (to stride), scinan (to shine) etc. As the third and the fourth forms originally had stress on the final syllable, if the verbs had voiceless fricatives in the second syllable, these turned into voiced stops (Verner's law): snidan — snad - snidon - sniden (to cut).

Class II Gradation formula: co - ea - u - o

The four basic form of the verbs of this class is: beodan - bead - budon - boden (to offer)

Other verbs of this class are: creopan (to creep), ceosan (to choose), fleotan (to fleet), dreosan (to fall), freosan (to freeze).

The verbs that had s after the root vowel had the change of the consonant (according to Verner's law this consonant changed into r):

freosan - freas - fruron - froren (to freeze)

Class III

The first and the second classes of strong verbs had a long root vowel or a diphthong) followed by one consonant. In the third class of Germanic strong verbs a short vowel was followed by two consonants. In Old English that was a position where short vowels were subjected to assimilative processes, hence there are several variations of root vowels in this class of verbs.

a) if nasal sound + another consonant followed the root vowel the gradation formula was:

i - a(o) - u - u drincan - dranc - druncon - druncen (to drink); findan - fand - fiindon — fitnden (to find). Here belong also such verbs as bindan (to bind), swindan (to vanish), windan (to wind), spinnan (to spin), winnan (to work) etc.

b) if l + another consonant followed the root vowel, then this formula was

i/e - ea - u - o helpan - healp - hulpon - holpen (to help)

Other verbs having such sounds are: delfan (to delve), sweljan (to swallow), meltan (to melt), sweltan (to die), bellan (to bark), swellan (to swell), melcan (to milk).

c) if r + consonant or h + consonant followed the root vowels then breaking in the first two forms changed the formula into

eo - ea - u - o steorfan - stearf - sturfon - storfen (to die). Here also belong ceorfan (to carve), weorpan (to throw), beorcan (to bark) etc.