origin, and does not seem to reflect any PIE ablaut pattern. In class 3, there are also a few cases where the vowel is followed, at least in Proto-Germanic, by two consonants, neither of which is a nasal or a liquid. Examples: *brestaną "to burst", *þreskaną "to thresh" *fehtaną "to fight". All but one have a nasal or a liquid in front of the vowel. This will have become syllabic and resulted regularly in u before the nasal or liquid, which was then metathesised on the analogy of the remaining principle parts. E.g. part 3 of *brestaną will have been *bʰr̥st- > *burst-, reformed to *brust-. Similarly, class 6 includes some cases where the vowel is followed by two obstruents, like *wahsijaną "to grow". In classes 5, 6 and 7, there is also a small subgroup called "j-presents". These form their present tense with an extra -j-, which causes umlaut in the present where possible. In West Germanic, it also causes the West Germanic gemination. Class 7 The forms of class 7 were very different and did not neatly reflect the standard ablaut grades found in the first 5 classes. Instead of (or in addition to) vowel alternations, this class displayed reduplication of the first consonants of the stem in the past tense. It is generally believed that reduplication was once a feature of all Proto-Indo-European perfect-aspect forms. It was then lost in most verbs by Proto-Germanic times due to haplology. However, verbs with vowels that did not fit in the existing pattern of alternation retained their reduplication. Class 7 is thus not really one class, but can be split into several subclasses based on the original structure of the root, much like the first 5 classes. The first three subclasses are parallel with classes 1 to 3 but with e replaced with a: 7a is parallel to class 1, class 7b to class 2, and class 7c to class 3. The following is a general picture of the Proto-Germanic situation as reconstructed by Jay Jasanoff. Earlier reconstructions of the 7th class were generally based mostly on Gothic evidence. The situation sketched above did not survive intact into any of the Germanic languages. It was changed significantly, but rather differently in Gothic on the one hand, and in the Northwest Germanic languages on the other. Gothic Reduplication was retained in Gothic, with the vowel inserted. However, as in all other