Strong verbs in Old and Middle English and irregular verbs in Modern English

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2, University of Tubingen (Seminar für Anglistik), course: Historical Grammar, language: English, abstract: In the following essay the development of strong verbs in English will be examined, starting in the Old English period and reaching up to Modern English times. The different classification systems and conjugational patterns that apply for the periods will be compared. The main task of the essay will be to find out similarities differences and parts which have remained the same in these systems. In the course of the essay, the Old English system of strong verbs will be compared to the Middle English system and finally the Modern English system. In order to do this, it will be necessary to describe the classification system of Old English strong verbs in detail as well as pointing out the conjugational patterns that apply for these verbs. In the next section the same will be done for Middle English strong verbs. In that section changes will already have to be mentioned. Afterwards, an entirely different classification of Modern English irregular verbs as suggested by Quirk & Greenbaum will be introduced. In addition the conjugational system of Modern English verbs will be described. Following this mainly descriptive first part of the essay, the second part will compare the systems and point out the main differences or similarities.The last section provides a summary of the developments which took place in the evolution of strong verbs and which have already been touched in the descriptions of the different classification systems.