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East Germanic strong verb
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This planned new article will describe the verb in Gothic parallel to the article West Germanic strong verb. It is subsidiary to the article Germanic verb.
The Indo-European vowel-alternations could be as follows:
- ei — oi — i
- eu — ou — u
- e — o — null
These are all the same, being an alternation between e - o - null with various modifications. Another type of ablaut was as follows:
- o — ō — a
Which is descended from:
- eh3 - oh3 - h3
Where h3 is a laryngeals which "colors" a preceding vowel in different ways. The important point is that all these classes are one and the same from an Pre-Proto-Indo-European point of view (that is, before the vowel coloring took place).
In Germanic, these became the following classes:
- ī — ai — i
- eu — au — u/o
- e/i — a — u/o
- a — ō — a
In the last class there was also a lengthened grade with ē
In Gothic we find these forms:
- dreiban (ei = ī) — draif (3sing) — dribun (3pl) — dribans (past participle)
- biudan — bauþ — budun — budans
- hilpan (from *helpan) — halp — hulpun — hulpans
- qiman (from *qeman) — qam — qemun (e = ē) — qumans
- faran — for (o = ō) — forun (o = ō) — farans
In addition, we find a class of reduplicating verbs, with or without vowel alteration:
- haitan — haihait (=hehait) — haihaitun (=hehaitun) — haitans
- tekan — taitok — taitokun — tekans
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