The Long Forms of ōn-Verbs in Old Saxon

[The long forms ( ahtoie, haloian, uuacoiande, etc.) of verbs of the second weak conjugation in Old Saxon are not of IE origin as is generally supposed, but owe their existence to an attempt to make a sharper formal distinction between indicative and subjunctive by adding the subjunctive endings of the first or jan -class to the stem of the second class. The extension of the long forms to the infinitive and present participle was due in part to the metrical advantages of these forms in certain types of alliterative verse.]

Ancient history · Anglo saxon · Linguistics · History · Lexicography and Language Studies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy · Psychology