The Conlang FAQ

Strong and Weak Verb Inflection

adapted from a March 25, 1997 post by Lars Henrik Mathiesen

From: Jan Havlis jdqh@CHEMI.MUNI.CZ

If I understand it right (strong verbs = regular verbs, etc) so Arkian has only strong verbs. I have constructed it to do not contain any irregularities and its agglutinating nature is the best for such purpose.
The terms "strong" and "weak" are traditional in linguistics; they are typically used when some classes of words can show internal changes through a paradigm and some cannot, or when some classes mark distinctions that others don't.

It is often true that there is more irregularity in the strong paradigms than in the weak ones. But that is not the reason for the grouping. But is also often true that words tend to change to a weak inflection over time, just as they often tend to become regular.

The two groups do not have to be exclusive. E.g., the Old Norse verbs are grouped into strong, weak, praeterito-presentic, and reduplicating verbs---plus the irregular ones.

Examples:

"Strong" verbs in the Germanic languages are the oldest type, and show the traces of ancient accent variations, the so-called Ablaut. In some verbs the vowel changes, in some it does not. The "weak" class arose later, and marks tenses with an ending. (This does not prevent the "root" vowel in weak verbs from changing; this is called Umlaut, and is caused by vowels in the endings).

"Weak" nouns and adjectives in Old Norse originally had stems ending in "-Vn"; for some reason this caused the loss of both the 'n' and the case endings, and the cases are at most marked by changes in the final vowel (and the Umlaut it may cause). The strong class still shows the case endings.

The "weak" form of adjectives in German and Scandinavian is used after certain determiners (very roughly). It marks fewer distinctions than the "strong" form. (E.g., invariant in Danish.)


Return to Conlang-related topics|Back to FAQ page

Copyright © 1997, Peter Clark,
Last updated: July 14, 1997