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Suppletive Verb Paradigms in English: Am, Are, Was) - Paradigms That Thus Combine Historically Unrelated Forms
Suppletive Verb Paradigms in English: Am, Are, Was) - Paradigms That Thus Combine Historically Unrelated Forms
Suppletive Verb Paradigms in English: Am, Are, Was) - Paradigms That Thus Combine Historically Unrelated Forms
The OE verb for 'be,' like its ME counterpart, combined forms of what
were originally four different verbs (seen in the present-day forms be,
am, are, was). Paradigms that thus combine historically unrelated forms
are called suppletive.
"Another suppletive verb is gan 'go,' whose preterit eode was doubtless
from the same Indo-European root as the Latin verb eo 'go.' Modern
English has lost the eode preterit but has found a new suppletive form
for go in went, the irregular preterit of wend (compare send-sent)."
(John Algeo and Thomas Pyles, The Origins and Development of the
English Language, 5th ed. Thomson Wadsworth, 2005)
http://grammar.about.com/od/rs/g/suppletionterm.htm