1.As far as the strong verbs were a non-productive class, some strong verbs turned into weak with time, i.e. started to employ -t/-d suffix in their form-building (e.g. to climb, to help, to swallow, to wash, etc.). Thus in NEonly 70 strong verbs out of 300 in OE remained.
2.The strong verbs were subdivided into 7 classes according to the type of vowel gradation/ablaut.
The classes that survived best through different periods of the history were classes 1, 3, 6:
Class 1 | Infinitive | Past Sg | Past Pl | Participle 2 |
OE | wrītan | wrāt | writon | writen |
ME | writen | wrot | writen | writen |
NE | write | wrote | written |
Class 3 | Infinitive | Past Sg | Past Pl | Participle 2 |
OE | findan | fand | fundon | funden |
ME | finden | fand | founden | founden |
NE | find | found | found |
Class 6 | Infinitive | Past Sg | Past Pl | Participle 2 |
OE | scacan | scoc | scōcon | scacen |
ME | shaken | shook | shoken | shaken |
NE | shake | shook | shaken |
Analysing the tables above, we can see that the following changes occurred:
· In MEthe inflections -an, -on, -en were all reduced to just one inflection à -en.
· In NEthe ending -nwas lost in the Infinitiveand preserved in the Participle 2 in order to distinguish these two forms.
· In NEPast Singular and Past Plural forms were unified, usually with the Singular form preferred as a unified form because Past Plural and Participle 2 often had similar forms and it was hard to distinguish them (e.g. ME writen (Past Pl) – writen (Part. 2))à the category of Number disappeared in the Verb.
In ModE the subdivision into classes was lost though we still can trace some peculiarities of this or that class in the forms of the irregular verbs.