By way of Margaret of Transblawg comes mention of a truly Teutonic society for irregular verbs (Gesellschaft zur Stärkung der Verben). German grammar distinguishes between two broad classes of verbs: strong (or irregular / ablauting) and weak (or regular). I'd mentioned them in passing in my entry on preterit-present verbs. We have these classes in English, too. Strong verbs, like sing, have grammatical forms that differ by vowel gradation: sing, sang, sung. Weak verbs, like love, use suffixation: love, loved, loved, for the corresponding forms. Though, strong verbs are irregular today, they developed from a regular process that became irregular through phonological and analogical change. In fact, other Indo-European language groups have remnants of the same processes. For example, Latin capio 'I seize', cepi 'I seized', Greek leipo 'I leave', elipon 'I left'. Some dialects of spoken English are even trying to turn some weak verbs into strong ones: e.g., dive, *dove instead of dived, or bring, *brang, *brung instead of brought. English has examples of weak verbs being strengthened: e.g., dive, dived alternating with dove. My question is when did Germans start calling Zeitwörter, Verben?
What do you mean, "*dove"? Yes, dive was originally a weak verb; so was prove: are you going to say *proven does not exist except in "some dialects of spoken English"? Merriam-Webster gives both dived and dove as past tense, and in the usage note says dove "has become the standard past tense esp. in speech in some parts of Canada. In the U.S. dived and dove are both widespread in speech... In writing, the past tense dived is usual in British English and somewhat more common in American English." This is not at all comparable to "bring, brang, brung," which I've never seen or heard except in linguistics texts. Not that there's anything wrong with uncommon analogical forms found in dialects, but dove is not such a form.
Posted by: language hat on August 13, 2003 02:57 PMOh, here we go. Dove has always sounded a little off to me. Would you use it in formal or written English? Actually, I knew this was problematic, even as I typed it. There were two verbs in OE, a strong one dúfan 'to duck, dive, or sink' (with past participle dofen) and a derivitive causal weak verb dýfan 'to dip, submerge', gedýfd. The OED suggest they began to fall together and be confused as early as the 12th century. But, I concede that dove is hardly dialectal.
As for bring, the OED cites a rare past participle, "brungen (mod. dial. brung), to which later dialects have added a strong pa. t., so as to conjugate, bring, brang, brung." I've heard people seriously use brang instead of brought. I'm with James A. H. Murray on this one.
Sorry, if I was a bit prescriptive.
Posted by: jim on August 13, 2003 03:20 PMYikes -- sorry, didn't mean to drive you to strikeout! It's just that I grew up saying "dove" and didn't like being told it was wrong, especially after I got a linguistics degree and had the ammunition to unleash a barrage like that in my first comment. So much depends on our backgrounds and preconceptions: to you it's always sounded "a little off"; to me it sounds homey. Furthermore, you've heard people use "brang," so it sounds more real to you than it does to me. Anyway, no offense meant; you should always take my Jacobin tone with several shakers of salt. I'm an oldest brother, so it comes naturally.
Posted by: language hat on August 13, 2003 05:05 PMCan't answer your question exactly, but my 1984 Duden Grammatik has a footnote to 115, Verb: "Andere, weniger angemessene Bezeichnungen sind Zit-, Tätigkeits- oder Tuwort".
Posted by: MM on August 14, 2003 04:05 AMI meant Zeitwörter, not Zitwörter, as of course you realized...
Posted by: MM on August 14, 2003 11:32 AMAnd Tunwörter, too. Alas, but my Duden dates from 1966, but I get the idea. Thanks.
Posted by: jim on August 14, 2003 11:38 AM