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In the Germanic languages, a strong verb is a verb that marks its past tense by means of changes to the stem vowel.A minority of verbs in any Germanic language are strong; the majority are weak verbs, which form the past tense by means of a dental suffix.
This applied both to stem-initial and stem-final labiovelars, and could be seen in verbs such as *strīkwaną "to stroke", where the -u- of the ending in the past nonsingular indicative (but not subjunctive) triggered delabialisation. In *kwemaną "to come", the -u- of the past participle stem itself triggered the change. [30]
Strong (or vocalic) verbs display vowel gradation or ablaut, that is, the past tense is marked by a change in the vowel in the stem syllable. Examples include: Modern English: fall – fell – fallen; sing – sang – sung; Old English: fallan – feoll – feollon – (ge)fallen (to fall) hātan – hēt – hēton – (ge)hāten (to be called)
The grammar of the German language is quite similar to that of the other Germanic languages.Although some features of German grammar, such as the formation of some of the verb forms, resemble those of English, German grammar differs from that of English in that it has, among other things, cases and gender in nouns and a strict verb-second word order in main clauses.
German verbs may be classified as either weak, with a dental consonant inflection, or strong, showing a vowel gradation ().Both of these are regular systems. Most verbs of both types are regular, though various subgroups and anomalies do arise; however, textbooks for learners often class all strong verbs as irregular.
The past participle in Middle High German is formed by prefixing "ge-" to the verb stem, in addition to a dental suffix ("-d-" or "-(e)t-") for weak verbs, or by prefixing "ge-" to the infinitive of a strong verb, with a possible vowel change in the stem. The past participle of "sëhen" is "gesëhen"; the past participle of "dienen" is "gedienet".
For example, in Arabic and Hebrew, words containing the root √k-t-b have a meaning related to writing (in Hebrew, a phonological process known as begadkefat, alters the quality of certain consonants when they follow a vowel, so b becomes v and k becomes ḵ (a voiceless velar fricative like German Bach); the symbol ː indicates the preceding consonant is doubled or geminate).
German declension is the paradigm that German uses to define all the ways articles, adjectives and sometimes nouns can change their form to reflect their role in the sentence: subject, object, etc. Declension allows speakers to mark a difference between subjects, direct objects, indirect objects and possessives by changing the form of the word—and/or its associated article—instead of ...