STUDIES IN" COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR. 119 



laut, il is unknown in Old High German, it appears in Middle High 

 German without excluding entirely u (o); we observe therefore a 

 fluctuation between u (o) andti. Bringen, brdhte, brdht; the strong 

 forms hranq^ brungpn are occasiimally found in documents of the 

 twelfth century. The strong pret. participle ge-brunqe(n) by the 

 side of gebrocht for gehracht is found in dialects of New High Ger- 

 man. Denken^ ddhte, ge-ddhf. (gedenkt. New High German patois); 

 dimken, duhte (dimkte), gedHht (gedunket); vilrhten, vurhten, vorli- 

 ten^ pret. vorhie, p. p. gevorht, gevurhtet, gevorhten; the o flattened 

 into a (o), continues in New High German patois. Wiirken, ivurken^ 

 wirken, pret. tvorhte^ (imrhte) wurhte, p. p. geivorhf, gewurht, ge- 

 iviirket. 



In Anglo-Saxon the a has weakened into ?', as in Gothic, e. g. 

 brinqan. The i, not only original, but also weakened, passes into 

 e, hence the form brengan, by the side of bringan; the ein brengan 

 might be considered as the Umlaut of the original «, on account 

 of the syncopated derivative i. I prefer, however, to take e as a 

 weakening of /, because this verb does not seem to have established 

 itself entirely as a weak verb, as indicated by the existence of the 

 strong forms brang, brungon. It forms the preterite brohfe^ not 

 brohte^ as the comparison with other dialects shows. Although the 

 Anglo-Saxon 6 is identical with the Gothic o, it corresponds here to 

 the Gothic d- an interchange between 6 and d is peculiar to Anglo- 

 Saxon (Low German.) In bgcgan the y is Umlaut of the original 

 w, which passes into o in the preterite. The consonant combination 

 eg represents the gemination of (/, which takes place before a 

 syncopated j according to HoJtzmann^ Altdeiitsche Grammatik, p. 

 212, 5. But it is preferable to assume an assimilation of the deri- 

 vated j to the preceding g: bygjan> bijggan> bycgan. This deri- 

 vative g (assimilated j) is dropped before the sufiix of the preterite, 

 which causes the reappearance of the original w=weakened o : 

 boc(g)-de> boc-te>boh-te; the sonant d is assimilated to the surd 

 c, and ''when two mutes come together, one of them often becomes 

 continuous for more easy utterance." Of hycgan <hygjan we 

 should expect, after the analogy of bohte, the preterite hohte, but 

 we find hygde or hogde. It formed the preterite from the unassim- 

 ilated hyg-jan either witJiout Ruck-umlaut hygde, or with Riick- 

 umlaut hogde (hiigde); in either case it dropped the derivative j, 

 being treated as a stem long by position. If it had formed the pre- 



