THE NEW, OR WEAK, CONJUGATION.

Endings of the Present Tense.

XXIV. How the Two Conjugations Arose.-The original Indo-European method of indicating completed action, action in past time, was by repeating the root. This naturally denoted that the act expressed by this syllable was finished. These two syllables tended to run together, and in the contraction resulting, especially in the Teutonic member of the family, the radical vowel was changed. This change, incidental and euphonic at first, came to be regarded as in itself a sufficient sign of past time.

But in different verbs the vowels or diphthongs resulting from the contraction differed, and something less "irregular

and seemingly capricious' was needed. This need was finally met by affixing did, the reduplicated preterite of do, to the verb; and this did, running down in Anglo-Saxon to de, and in English to ed, came at length to form the preterite, or past tense, of most verbs in these two languages. Those verbs in which this vowel-change, resulting from reduplication, was looked upon as sufficiently indicative of past action or state constitute the conjugation termed strong -strong, because the verbs in it are able to form the past tense without the aid of another verb; those which for this purpose invoke the help of did constitute the conjugation called weak. Since most verbs in Anglo-Saxon and in English fall into this last class, these are also called "regular," and those, "irregular."

XXV. Wherein the Conjugations Agree and Wherein they Differ. We have set down the endings of only two tenses, the present and the past. And this because these are the only tenses in which the verb has endings to indicate person and number in the several modes.

The two conjugations agree perfectly in other tenses, and in one of the two whose endings are given above. Verbs in the two conjugations have in the present the same termi、nations, singular and plural, in the indicative and in the subjunctive, and the same infinitive and participle endings.

The two conjugations differ only in the past tense, and here only in two particulars, (1) the strong changes the radical vowel to indicate tense, while the weak employs d; and (2) the endings of the strong in the indicative and the participle are not quite the same as those following the d in the weak.

XXVI. Loss of Verbs from the Strong Conjugation.—In his English Past and Present, Trench sorrowfully descants upon

the desertion of strong verbs to the weak, and predicts the speedy surrender of the few yet loyal to the old flag. But a more thorough study of literature would have stayed the grief of the good Dean, and we should have been spared his gloomy prophecy. The indefatigable Lounsbury has ascertained (1) that there were over three hundred simple strong verbs in Anglo-Saxon; (2) that one hundred of these are not found in English at all; and (3) that more than one hundred of the remainder have gone over from the strong to the weak.

But he has also ascertained (1) that only twelve strong verbs in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales have since deserted to the weak; (2) that only four verbs, strong in the Tales, are both weak and strong now; (3) that only three, partially weak in the Tales, are now wholly weak; while (4) four, weak in the Tales, are strong now. And, comparing literature two hundred years later than the Chaucerian with our own, the Professor says, "Modern English has lost not a single one [strong verb] since the reign of Queen Elizabeth ;" and adds, "The present disposition of the language is not only to hold firmly to the strong verbs it already possesses, but . . . even to extend their number whenever possible." And he adduces a few, as shine, strive, shake, and others, which, since 1600, have dropped ed in the preterite, and now form the tense by variation of the stem-vowel.

This, however, should be said, that new English verbs, from whatever source derived, form their past tense and past participle in ed as regularly as new nouns add s to form the plural. So that, while the weak conjugation is no longer recruiting itself from the strong, its numbers are slowly increasing.

XXVII. Changes in the Present and Past Tenses.-1. The

Third Person Indicative Singular.—In the third person singular indicative present of both conjugations the AngloSaxon (th), even before the Conquest, frequently softened to s in the North of England. But in Middle and Southern England the regular th was continued even during what is called the Middle English Period of our literature, 1350– 1550. Chaucer almost always uses this th, and the English Bible invariably. The s from the North gradually pushed its way, and, by the middle of the seventeenth century, became the prevailing form.

2. Dropping Final Letters. After the Conquest the fashion obtained in verbs, as in nouns, of dropping the final n after the preceding a or o had softened into e. Then this e

disappeared, first from pronunciation and then from the word; though in the infinitive and elsewhere it is still sometimes. retained to show that the preceding vowel is long, as in bite, but more frequently lost, as in hear.

In the indicative plural present of both conjugations, the Anglo-Saxon termination, ath, eth, was continued in the South of England; but, throughout the central portion, en

-an intrusion of the subjunctive en, some think—became the established form. Modern English seized upon this en; and, discarding the n wholly and the e partially, "caused all the persons of the plural to assume the same form as the infinitive and the first person singular." And thus they stand to-day.

In the subjunctive the n and the e vanished as in the indicative.

3. The Imperative.-The imperative was used in the second person, singular and plural. The plural ending ath, weakened to eth, was sometimes dropped, and the two numbers were often used interchangeably. This result may have

been hastened by the substitution of ye, afterward you, for thou in address. Later, the plural ending went out of use, as did the singular, when the verb had one, by the weakening of a to e and the disuse of e.

4. The Present Participle.-The Anglo-Saxon present participle of both conjugations ended in ende. The final e was dropped here, as elsewhere, and the end sometimes appeared in the North as and and in the South as ind. But there was a verbal noun in Anglo-Saxon in ung, afterwards ing. The meaning of this and of the present participle was the same, and the sameness of function brought about a sameness of form-ing.

5. Exceptional Preterites.—The preterite of some weak verbs in Anglo-Saxon had, between the stem and the personal endings, either the connective o or ia, to which the full Teutonic connective aja had been reduced. When a connective e had been inserted between the stem and the personal endings of verbs that did not have o or ia, and these two had in English weakened to e, then e became the general connective of the weak preterite. And when the don of the plural indicative had weakened to den, and then of this mode and of the subjunctive plural den had disappeared, and the e preceding the n had also vanished, then ed became, as now, the full ending appended to the stem to form the weak preterite.

But if the e in the ed is not pronounced, this ed often has (1) the sound of t, as in kissed and looked; often (2) not, as in spoiled and spilled; often (3) the same verb has two forms and two sounds, as in spoiled and spoilt, spelled and spelt-the unpronounced e in the second form has fallen out, and the d, pronounced t, has become t. In some verbs (4) the ed is always a separate syllable, as in greeted and