principal parts, if he tries mechanically to repeat spring, sprang, sprung, and may say spring, sprung, sprang, but if he thinks of the forms as he is in the habit of using them, I spring, I sprang, I have sprung, it is much less likely that he will go wrong. The forms given below in brackets are those less frequently used, or used only in special phrases. The letter W. prefixed to forms in the list of Strong Verbs indicates that those forms are Weak. The following verbs show a departure from the regular formation of the Past Tense and Past Participle in -d or -t. Help was a strong verb: the past participle holpen occurs in the A.V. 'He hath holpen his servant Israel.' Clave, cloven, are from cleave, 'to split': cleaved, cleft, from cleave, 'to cling to.' But clave was sometimes used for cleaved (Ruth, i. 14), and cleft for cloven. Wrought from work shows transposition of consonants. Go (P. Part. gone) supplies its Past Tense went from wend, which is now inflected as a Weak verb, wended. Yclept is from an Old Eng. verb meaning 'to call.' The y is a corruption of the prefix ge-, which occurs in the P. Part. in modern German. 173. Conjugation of the Verb. The collection of all the forms of a Verb, by which we mark its Voice, Mood, Tense, Number, and Person, is called its Conjugation. We have already seen that our supply of inflexions is quite insufficient to mark many of the distinctions of voice, mood, and tense, which we wish to express. In conjugating our verbs we therefore make use of other verbs called Auxiliaries. These Auxiliary Verbs will be discussed in the next chapter, but as the reader possesses a practical knowledge of his own language, it will be no embarrassment to him, if we complete our treatment of the verb generally, by inserting at this point illustrations of the conjugation of a verb, although to do this will involve the employment of those Auxiliaries to the treatment of which we are to come later on. First we will give the conjugation of a Weak and of a Strong Verb containing all their simple forms (that is, those not made by the aid of auxiliary verbs), both inflected and uninflected. The reader should notice (1) that the conjugation when confined to the simple forms is of very limited extent, and (2) that the inflexions of Strong verbs are the same as those of Weak verbs except in the Past Tense and Past Participle. Take as the Weak verb want, and as the Strong verb break'. 1 Low's English Language, pp. 129, 148. |