formed the base of the Germanic weak verbs, and did not inherit the accent shift, so the alternation itself only affects Germanic strong verbs. A process of levelling has meant that there are only few examples of this in the modern languages. In East and North Germanic, this levelling was almost complete before the earliest records, though Gothic and Old Norse did have traces of . In Old English, too, the levelling had already begun to the extent that in some verbs the preterite singular had taken the consonant of the preterite plural. The only surviving example in Modern English is was:were, but a trace can also be seen in the adjective forlorn, which reflects the old participle of the verb to lose, or sodden, which is originally a participle of seethe. This latter is parallelled by German sieden, sott, gesotten. German also features d:t in leiden, litt, gelitten ("to suffer") and schneiden, schnitt, geschnitten ("to cut"). One example of h:g is ziehen, zog, gezogen ("to pull"). All other cases have been levelled. Apart from the English copula mentioned above, the only occurrences of s:r in the modern languages are in Dutch: for example verliezen, verloor, verloren ("to lose") and verkiezen, verkoos, verkoren ("to choose"). Some examples: *f ~ *b (no examples in the modern languages) Old English: hebban – hōf hōfon hafen ("to lift", cf. heave) *þ ~ *d (survives in modern German) Old English: cweþan (cwiþþ) cwæþ – cwǣdon cweden ("to say", cf. quoth) Old English: sēoþan (sīeþþ) sēaþ – sudon soden ("to boil", cf. seethe) Modern German: schneiden – schnitt geschnitten ("to cut") *h ~ *g (survives in modern Dutch and modern German) Middle High German: zîhen zêch – zigen gezigen ("to upbraid") Old English: þeon (þīehþ) þāh – þigon þigen ("to prosper", cf. German gedeihen) Modern Dutch: slaan sla - sloeg geslagen ("to hit", Dutch lost intervocalic h) Modern German: ziehen - zog, gezogen ("to pull", the intervocalic h is not pronounced) *hw ~ *gw/w/g (survives in modern Dutch) Old English: sēon seah – sāwon sewen ("to see", Old English lost intervocalic h) (Remnant in Modern English spelling: see – saw) Old High German: sehan sah – sāgun gisehan/gisewan Modern Dutch: zien zie gezien – zag zagen ("to see", Dutch lost intervocalic h) Modern Swedish: se ser – såg *s ~ *z (survives in modern Dutch, and in the English copula) Old English: wesan, wæs –