Weak Verbs?

Question

I was wondering about 'mown' vs. 'mowed,' and 'sown' vs. 'sowed' as past participles, and came across this:
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mow (v.)
is a weak verb whose principal parts are mow, mowed, mowed or mown. As past participle, Americans usually use mowed (He had just mowed the lawn), but both mowed and mown function as participial adjectives: The smell of newly mowed (newly mown, new-mowed, new-mown) grass was in the air.
The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Copyright 1993 Columbia University Press.
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And I wasn't familiar with the term "weak verb" comments?

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]I was wondering about 'mown' vs. 'mowed,' and 'sown' vs. 'sowed' as past participles, and came across this: +++ mow ... Standard American English. Copyright 1993 Columbia University Press. +++ And I wasn't familiar with the term "weak verb" comments?[/nq]
This seems to me a strange use of the term "weak verb." In Germanic languages, a "weak verb" is one in which the change in principle parts is by the use of suffixes, a "strong one" is changed by internal vowel change. "Swin, swam, swum" is strong. It is not unusual for learners of a language to produce past and past participle forms for strong verbs as if they were weak. "Mow" is indeed weak: both the "mowed" and "mown" forms are produced by affixation rather than ablaut.

Germanic languages other than English also have strong and weak nouns. The strong nouns undergo internal vowel changes during declension. We do have some of these in English. Examples are goose and geese, and foot and feet.

Usenet · Answer

Good question. The use of the term "weak" for verbs and the "opposite" category also exists "strong" verbs requires just a bit of imagination regarding the nomenclature, but isn't very complicated, really. In a nutshell, "weak" means "regular" English verb conjugation, and "strong" means "irregular" forms. The "weak" verbs in English greatly outnumber the "strong" verbs.
First, think of "strong" verbs (something you didn't ask...) They're "strong" because they do "what they want". (...that's the "imagination" part.) In the Germanic languages (English included), "strong" means the verbs change the vowel in the stem of the word and don't add a "weak" ending. (This "weak" ending in English has a -t or a -d or a -ud sound, and can be spelled -t, -d, or -ed and pronouced all three ways, depending on how the actual sound of the verb stem ends: "spilt milk", "spilled milk", "burnt toast", "burned toast," "My learned friend went on in later years and learned Croatian with ease." The three options for spelling and pronunciation, -t-d-ed, are really just variations on one underlying thing that's going on with pronunciation, in "weak" verbs.

The "strong" verb usually changes its vowel sounds in the stem itself (there are several different patterns for this) to make the different tenses or parts of the verbs, without adding an ending. Strong forms include the present, past and past participle forms of the verb (sometimes used as a verb, sometimes as an adjective): "They swim a lap today. They swam two laps yesterday. They have swum a lot lately." Similarly: 'sing' 'sang' and 'have sung,' etc. Depending on who's doing the counting, there may be 100 to
200 "strong" verbs in English.

With some strong verbs there may be sometimes be forms ending in -n sometimes used as verbs, sometimes as adjectives just "strewn about" and still existing in English, as you noticed with 'mowed' and 'mown'. (If we shear sheep for a living, we produce shorn sheep at the end of the process.) But those -n forms are not a given for all English "strong" verbs... "Weak" verbs are everything that's left.
Dave

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Good question. The use of the term "weak" for verbs and the "opposite" category also exists "strong" verbs ... means "regular" English verb conjugation, and "strong" means "irregular" forms. The "weak" verbs in English greatly outnumber the "strong" verbs.[/nq]
It may be a nutshell, but it doesn't hold a kernel. "Regular" and "irregular" are more useful terms than "weak" and "strong," but they don't describe the same thing. Many irregular verbs are weak.

Weak Verbs?

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