- Halle's statement,”… from the infinitives /bl'aiben/ and /r'aiten/ it is impossible to predict whether the vowel in the past will be long or short” is disconcerting. Cf. O. Curme's statement in his Grammar of the German Language, second rev. ed. (New York, 1952), p. 302: “If the [inf.] stem terminates in ch, I, β, t… the vowel [in] past tense and perf. past is short, while it is in all other cases long i…” This statement leaves only three list items (heissen, leiden, schneiden), whereas Halle's leaves seventeen list items, thirteen verbs (3.31) plus four verbs which are not included in his main classificatory description (leiden, schneiden, gehen, hauen, 3.01). Curme's rule could be succinctly restated: “/-ai-/ succeeded by voiceless cons, alternates with/-i-/ in past and past part., otherwise with /-i:-/.” In this case, classification with the infinitive stem as the base is obviously preferable.
- If predictability is not important, as is usually the case in descriptions of a rather low number of items, both procedures may, of course, be considered to be equally adequate.
- In “The Use of Prediction in Teaching the German Verb,” by J. W. Marchand, an article written strictly from an educational point of view, it is stated that “if one wants to take a different base from the present infinitive, it is probably best to use the past participial base, since predictions from it offer much fewer irregularities than a prediction from the preterite base.” Language Learning, V (1955), 141. While a past participial base offers some distinctive advantages, particularly in predicting the alternants of the Class VII verbs, I have found that the infinitival base affords higher over-all predictability, i. e. fewer verbs remain to be listed. Also, it is, as Marchand admits, “extremely impractical to take a base other than the infinitive…” (p. 142).
- Cf. H. Reis, “Der Untergang der einfachen Vergangenheitsformen,” Germanischromanische Monatsschrift II (1910), 382 f. Partly because of this primacy of the pres. or past perfect over the simple past, several strong verbs today occur only in the past participle form (outside of the infinitive), often in adjectival use: aufgedunsen, gemahlen, (ab)geschahen, geschroten, υerυorren, etc.
- The gratuitous statement that verbs such as heben (listed as /ho:b/, of course) “have a minor present tense alternant” (p. 51), thus ich hebe, du hiebst, can hardly be considered to be obviated by the subsequent one, that “this minor stem is not always used.”
- Cf. H. Falk and E. Selmer, Tysk Grammalikk (Oslo, 1934), p. 108.
- Ibid.
- Cf. Marchand (fn. 3): “If we add a few extra restrictions [ei + l, m, n, r are weak [exception scheinen), ie + l, m, n are weak…), we can use it [Pollard's rule] with a fair degree of certainty” (p. 140).
- Cf. Bloomfield's recommendation: “We try, of course, to arrange our description so that as many forms as possible will be included in general statements.” (Language, New York, 1933, p. 213). As the number of exceptions to the rule tends to approximate that of the items covered, however, the usefulness of general statements decreases correspondingly. (Cf. classes 13 and 14 below, which are not combined, for listing of a relatively large number of verbs would be necessary whatever group we might consider as primary or stateable in general form). For the larger classes, which can be described in general statements with very high predictability, it has not seemed necessary to list all the verbs that “follow the rules.” The exceptions listed, however, are the only ones that I have been able to find in current grammars of German.
- This does not mean that I recommend the description for the use of students in elementary German, but rather that even for pedagogical purposes this description would be preferable to the one discussed above.
- According to C. Purin, A Standard German Vocabulary (Boston, 1937), all these verbs except leiden are among the 500 most frequent German words; leiden is one of the 1000 most frequent words. In the same word-list, which includes 2932 words, sieden, glimmen, klimmen, schinden, schrinden are not recorded at all, and melken is listed as a weak verb.
- H. A. Gleason, An Introduction lo Descriptive Linguistics (New York, 1955), pp. 102–103. Cf. his discussion of the French verb paradigms, p. 123, and B. Bloch's description of English verbs in Language XXIII (1947), 399–418.
- Earlier Middle High German had a sixth slot, between C and D, for ind. 2 pers. sing. past. The models of the late MHG strong verb system according to the seven classes, excluding verbs that do not completely “belong,” are:
- A A C D D
- A B C D E
- A B C D A
- A B C C A
- D is the slot for past plural, and E for past participle. For comparative purposes, the past plural (here, D) could be termed C1; in this way, one aspect of the “drift” can be described as the coalescence of C and C1, or as the neutralization of the opposition C:C.1 This statement, while descriptionally sound, does not take into consideration the possible analogizing force of the past participle alternant on past forms such as schund and schrund, a diachronic problem that is yet to be solved, however.
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