Old Norse weak and strong verbs
Old Norse grammar | Proto-Germanic | Verbs
The Grammar by sagas series starts from the sagas and infers the grammar. In the present series, which takes on a real textbook feel, we lay down the grammatical foundations in a more systematic way.
Grammar may seem austere to those who have yet to discover its almost mathematical charms. We shall gladly plead in the near future in favor of a certain grammatical mastery, paving the way for the comprehension and enjoyment of texts in their original version - but we may be preaching to the converted.
Besides the grammar tables and their rigor, we shall sometimes delight in a little historical and theoretical depth, and in what follows, the subject that interests us is verbs, the Old Norse distinction between weak and strong verbs.
If you are a native English speaker, or if English is second nature to you, you may forget in everyday life that you are constantly manipulating verbs that are sometimes weak, sometimes strong. And yet, you never make mistakes.
Yet let's take a closer look.
The verb whose infinitive is to ride conjugates as follows, where we show on a line the indicative present and past tenses followed by the past participle (which forms the compound tenses).
ride - rode - ridden
Let's further observe, for example, to take, to freeze and to grow.
take - took - taken
freeze - froze - frozen
grow - grew - grown
These verbs are strong, and contrast with weak ones such as to cook or to play.
cook - cooked - cooked
play - played - played
The respective characteristics become clear. The weak verb seems to form the indicative past tense and the past participle by simply adding the suffix -ed. The present indicative is the infinitive in all persons but the third singular, which we know appends a terminal -s or -es.
Well, this is almost the full picture. The indicative past tense or past participle sometimes adds only a -d or a -t to the infinitive, as in to love or to dream respectively.
love - loved - loved
dream - dreamed or dreamt - dreamed or dreamt
as per a British English grammar.
Our strong verbs, for their part, vary the vowel, that is their distinguishing feature.
ride - rode - ridden
take - took - taken
freeze - froze - frozen
grow - grew - grown
More precisely, the present indicative retains the infinitive form and vowel. The past indicative alters the vowel, and in took, omits the final -e from the infinitive. The past participle also alters the vowel, adds an -n and in ridden doubles the consonant. These vowel variations seem to be quite erratic, but we remember noticing certain trends in elementary school, an o - e - o pattern in
grow - grew - grown
throw - threw - thrown
or ea - o - o in
break - broke - broken
speak - spoke - spoken
These are the remnants of a rather distant phonological process, already underway in Proto-Indo-European. Our reconstruction of Proto-Germanic, the most recent ancestor common to all Germanic branches, indicates a fairly regular system of strong verbs, comprising roughly seven coherent classes, each characterized by a vowel alteration pattern. These seven classes are well preserved in the first batch of Germanic languages: Gothic, Old English, Old Norse, Old High German, and fade thereafter. (Ringe, 2017, p.262-263)
Let's observe the remnants of the same phenomenon in modern German, for example
finden - fand - fanden - gefunden (to find)
zwingen - zwang - zwangen - gezwungen (to coerce)
glimmen - glomm - glommen - geglommen (to glow)
beginnen - begann - begannen - begonnen (to begin)
schwimmen - schwamm - schwammen - geschwommen (to swim)
trinken - trank - tranken - getrunken (to drink)
where both the 3rd. singular and 3rd. plural forms are given for the preterite (past) indicative. Those specimens can be associated with the Proto-Germanic 3rd class, just like the following modern English verbs
shrink - shrank - shrunk
begin - began - begun
swim - swam - swum
drink - drank - drunk
cling - clung - clung
bind - bound - bound
win - won - won
and all show a similar vowel shift i - a - u (ou), with substitution of -o- in the past participle for geschwommen or begonnen, in the past indicative (preterite) and past participle for glomm - glommen - geglommen or win - won - won, with substitution of -u- (or -ou-) in the past indicative for clung and bound.
With these examples, we have pretty much mapped out the modern German and English 3rd class of strong verbs, or more precisely, a subset of it. A very lucid mind will have noticed a common trait in all these verbs that make i - a - u or approximately.
finden - zwingen - glimmen - beginnen - schwimmen - trinken
all share a certain sameness: their stem is nasal, the stem vowel is followed by an -n, exceptionally by an -m. Incidentally, our perverted -o- cases are precisely such -m exceptions. The same goes for English
shrink - begin - swim - drink - cling - bind - win
There is even a little more in common: the nasal (-n) is (almost) always followed by a consonant.
finden - zwingen - glimmen - beginnen - schwimmen - trinken
shrink - begin - swim - drink - cling - bind - win
Incidentally, we now see that our German -o- exceptions match exactly the infinitive stems that repeat the nasal consonant: glimmen - beginnen - schwimmen.
Happy with our findings, let's ascend back to the Proto-Germanic ancestor, following the example of this 3rd class, first (nasal) subset.
The pattern of this subclass was present *iN, past indicative singular *aN, default past (e.g., plural) *uN, past participle *uN while the root always ended in a consonant. (Where the nasals writes with a capital letter.) Some twenty verbs belonging to it could be reconstructed (Ringe, 2017, p.269), including
*finþaną, *fanþ, *fundun, *fundanaz (to find)
*drinkaną, *drank, *drunkun, *drunkanaz (to drink)
*brinnaną, *brann, *brunnun, *brunnanaz (to burn, intransive)
whose descendants we are delighted to trace:
finþan - fanþ - funþun (Gothic)
finna - fann - fundu - fundinn (Old Norse)
findan - fand - fundon - funden (Old English)
findan - fand - funtun - funtan (Old High German)
and of course the modern
finden - fand - fanden - gefunden (High German)
find - found - found (English)
vinden - vond - gevonden (Dutch)
finne - fant - funnet (Norwegian)
etc.
The same goes for the following examples, with the Gothic
drigkan - dragk - drugkun - drugkans
brinnan - brann
the Old Norse
drekka - drakk - drukku - drukkinn
brenna (~ brinna) - brann - brunnu - brunninn
the Old English
drincan - dranc - druncon - druncen
birnan - barn - burnon - burnen
and the Old High German
trinkan - trank - trunkun - gitrunkan
brinnan - brann - brunnun - gibrunnan
Here at last is the Proto-Germanic ancestor of our exceptional verb, featuring a nasal geminate
*swimmaną - *swamm - *summun - *summanaz
with numerous descendants, including the Old Norse
svimma - (swim) - svamm - summu - symmi - summinn
Incidentally, we are here using Haugen's notation for strong verbs
infinitive - (indicative present 3rd pers. sg.) - indicative preterite 3rd pers. sg. - indicative preterite 3rd pers. pl. - (conjunctive preterite 3rd pers. sg.) - supine
where the infinitive is also the indicative present 3rd pers. sg. and represent the present stem. (Haugen, 2015, p.102) Supine denotes, as far as Old Norse and Icelandic are concerned, the nominativ and accusative neuter of the past participle.
This has been a great exercise in genealogy, which we shall pursue further in the near future. In short, the Proto-Germanic strong verb system inherits vowel variations stemming from a phonological process of vowel gradation, called ablaut, that was active in Proto-Indo-European. Those vowel variations outlines seven Proto-Germanic classes of strong verbs, initially rather regular, later fading away with the emergence of the descendant languages, but still traceable in modern Germanic languages. Characteristically, strong verbs have several distinct stems, namely for the indicative present tense, the indicative past tense singular and plural, and the past participle. The set of these radicals presents a vowel variation, the typical pattern of which links the verb to one of the strong verb classes.
What about weak verbs? Let's look briefly at the German for to cook or to love.
lieben - liebt - liebte - liebten - geliebt (to love)
kochen - kocht - kochte - kochten - gekocht (to cook)
Those are German weak verbs, and as with English weak verbs, the stem vowel is not altered by conjugation. The ending -te/-ten is added to the present tense stem to form the preterite, -t to form the past participle. As in English, German weak verbs form their preterite and past participle by means of a dental suffix, that is to say, some /t/ or /d/ sound or similar: this, anew, dates back to Proto-Germanic times.
Proto-Germanic originally inherited the strong Proto-Indo-European verbs, but the ablaut or vowel gradation process that formed them is no longer productive in Proto-Germanic. (The vowel variation “rule” is no longer active, so if a "Proto-German" coins a new verb, that verb is not subject to the rule.) As a result, almost all new verbs in Germanic languages are weak verbs, and most of the original strong verbs decay into weak verbs by analogy.
What characterizes all weak verbs, Ringe tells us, is the common formation of the past participle, of a default finite past tense (all tenses, modes and persons), with the exception of a distinct singular indicative past tense. More specifically, the past participle of weak verbs always has a stem vowel *-a- or *-ō-, and is formed with the suffix *-da- (with a few exceptions). The past tense suffix begins with the dental obstruent *-d-, with the suffix and endings following a well-defined pattern. (Ringe, 2017, p.280) (To level out the terminology, a conjugated verb is formed by a stem, a suffix (here, the past tense suffix begins with a *-d-) and an ending typical of the mode, tense and person.)
Ringe distinguishes four major classes of weak verbs in Proto-Germanic, plus three unclassifiable verbs, relics of Proto-Indo-European and said to have a simple thematic present tense. (Ringe, 2017, p.262-263) We shall gladly explore further the typologies and mechanisms of Proto-Germanic weak (and strong) verbs at a later date, but for now, and to strictly serve our purpose, we are content to observe a largely represented weak class, class II as per Ringe.
Verbs in this second class have a suffix *-ō- in the present tense, *-ōd- in the past tense, and *-ōda- to form the past participle. Take *kalzōną, for example. The third person makes *kalzōþi in the present indicative, *kalzōdē in the past indicative, while the past participle is reconstructed as *kalzōdaz. It gives Proto-West Germanic *kalʀōn, Old English ceallian and English to call. On the other hand, Old Norse kalla.
Verbs of this weak class, therefore new verbs, which Proto-Germanic created, often derive from a noun or adjective. *laþōną (to invite) from *laþō (invitation) and *fiskōną (to catch fish) from *fiskaz (fish) make very regularly
*laþōþi - *laþōdē - *laþōdaz
*fiskōþi - *fiskōdē - *fiskōdaz
After this necessary archaeological preliminaries, we turn to Old Norse. Only three weak verb classes remain, and the typology is very clear. We follow Haugen. (Haugen, 2015, p.103)
The first Old Norse class is the heir of the second Old Proto-Germanic weak verb class we just visited. Kalla belongs therefore to it, the same goes for kasta, so Haugen says, kasta-class. It is characterized by a past tense suffix composed of a linking vowel, -a-, followed by the dentalsuffix.
We have, using the form
infinitive - (present indicative) - preterite indicative - (preterite subjunctive) - past participle
kasta - (kastar) - kastaði - (kastaði) - kastat
kalla - (kallar) - kallaði - (kallaði) - kallat
The remaining two Old Norse classes outlined by Haugen do not seem to us to correspond bijectively to the Proto-Germanic classes delineated by grammarians.
Verbs from the second Old Norse class of weak verbs as per Haugen, the telja-klasse, are characterized by a preterite suffix with no linking vowel, formed by the dentalsuffix alone, and a vowel shift from the preterite to the present stem, e.g.,
gremja - (gremr) - gramdi - (gremdi) - gramt
telja - (telr) - taldi - (teldi) - talt
flytja - (flytr) - flutti - (flytti) - flutt)
Some inherit from the Proto-Germanic class I, globally endowed with suffixes having *-i- or *-j- in the present and preterite tenses, e.g. *gramjaną (to get angry) - *gramiþi - *gramidē - *gramidaz giving the Old Norse gremja.
However, from *hauzijaną, which clearly belongs to the same class I as *gramjaną - *hauzīþi - *hauzidē - *hauzidaz derives the Old Norse heyra, a clear representative of the third class under Haugen. This third class, the so-called dǿma-class, is characterized by a past tense suffix with no linking vowel, formed by the dentalsuffix alone. In contrast to the second class, there is no stem vowel shift, e.g.,
heyra - (heyrir) - heyrði - (heyrði) - heyrt
dǿma - (dǿmir) - dǿmdi - (dǿmdi) - dǿmt
fǿra - (fǿrir) - fǿrði - (fǿrði) - fǿrt
What about Proto-Germanic class III and IV verbs? Some class III verbs, such as *þulāną and *wakāną, give partial representatives of the døma-klass
þola - (þolir) - þoldi - (þøldi) - þolat
vaka - (vakir) - vakti - (vekti) - vakat
as a vowel change affects the preterite subjunctive like in the second class, whereas the past participle is formed with a linking vowel as in the first class. And as for the Proto-Germanic class IV, says Ringe, it fuses with classes II and III while evolving into Old Norse.
We shall soon continue to excavate the mysteries of these typologies.
A sharp mind, however, will have twitched. We said that strong verbs are characterized by a pattern of vowel variation, and yet our second class of weak verbs has one too, like
telja - (telr) - taldi - (teldi) - talt
Good point. The key is that this is not the same type of vowel variation. The vowel shift of the weak verb telja is not a Proto-Indo-Enropeen remnant (of the ablaut process), but the result of a process active in Old Norse. Because telja injects a -j-, its stem -a- shifts to -e-. This is a phonological i-umlaut, and we shall have ample opportunity to discuss it afresh.
Old Norse thus has strong and weak verbs. Strong verbs are characterized by a set of stems with vowel variations, while weak verbs form the past tense and the past participle with a dentalsuffix, preceded or not by a linking vowel. We are now well equipped to detect the verbs when viewing a new sample from the sagas, as we shall soon be doing anew in the Grammar by sagas and Norse practice series.
References
Ringe, D. (2017). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Haugen, O. E. (2015). Norrøn grammatikk i hovuddrag. Novus.
Wiktionary, Appendix:Proto-Germanic_verbs https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Germanic_verbs