American Language (83 page)

Following are paradigms showing the conjugation of some of the more interesting verbs of the vulgate, with notes on variants:

A glance at these paradigms is enough to show several general tendencies, the most obvious of which is the transfer of verbs from the strong conjugation with vowel change to the weak without it, and
vice versa
. The former began before the Norman Conquest, and was marked during the Middle English period. Chaucer used
growed
for
grew
in the prologue to “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” and
rised
for
rose
and
smited
for
smote
are in John Purvey’s edition of the Bible,
c
. 1385. Many of these transformations were afterward abandoned, but a large number survived, for example,
climbed
for
clomb
as the preterite of
to climb
, and
melted
for
molt
as the preterite of
to melt
. Others showed themselves during the early part of the Modern English period.
Comed
as the perfect participle of
to come
, and
digged
as the preterite of
to dig
are both in Shakespeare, and the latter is also in Milton and in the Authorized Version of the Bible. This tendency went furthest, of course, in the vulgar speech, and it has been embalmed in the English dialects.
I seen
and
I knowed
, for example, are common to all of them. But during the Seventeenth Century, for some reason to me unknown, there arose a contrary tendency — that is, toward strong conjugations. The vulgar speech of Ireland, which preserves many Seventeenth Century forms, shows it plainly.
Ped
for
paid, gother
for
gathered
, and
ruz
for
raised
are still heard there, and P. W. Joyce says flatly that the Irish, “retaining the old English custom [
i.e.
, the custom of the period of Cromwell’s invasion,
c
. 1650], have a leaning toward the strong inflection.”
⁸⁶
Certain forms of the early American national period, now reduced to the estate of localisms, were also survivors of the Seventeenth Century.