LL-L "Morphophonology" 2005.08.18 (04) [E]

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From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2005.08.17 (03) [E]

Dan Prohaska was explaining to Paul Finlow-Bates about the shifting of
stress patterns in early Germanic languages.
Maybe that is a partial answer to  something I do not understand:
I have been taught that "Ablaut", the shift in tonal quality between present
and past tense of verbs, was something that was used in PIE. Growing up in
the Netherlands I was very aware that some verbs were strong and some weak.
I also was told that "weak verbs" were a Germanic invention.
Question one. Did the weak verbs come into existence after the stress had
been settled on the first syllable of the verb? Did that happen under the
influence of making new verbal constructions starting with a preposition? If
so, are the verbal constructions which start with a "Particle" older or
younger than the ones with the prepositions?  In Dutch most verbs that have
constructions starting with a preposition are strong and the ones with
particles are weak. Of course there is also verklaren (weak) which has the
stress on the verbal part but inklaren has the stress on the preposition.
Also I have noticed that in French there are fewer soundshifts in the verbal
parts. There is sometimes a shift between the vowel of the whole verb and
the vowel of the present tense (Mourir, je meure) but there the stress
usually is on the conjugated part of the verb and there is no change between
present and past tenses. Did the romance languages do away with the
"Ablaut"?
Anyhow I am really befuddled. Can anybody give me the title of a book for
total dunces so that I can feed my curiosity. Jacqueline

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