Talk about needing a linguist. I've bout given up hope of ever seeing rbarr here (remember rbarr?) but there's always NicholasW (anybody seen *him lately?). Rbarr once back where I first met her did a whole thing on shined vs. shone that explained it so nicely. Problem is some verbs became strong even when they shouldn't have (strive, strove, striven as opposed to strive, strived, strived {you hear both}) others (jive, jove....no wait, jive, jived, jived) grew up weak. What made the one or the other in OE probably predates English and is best left to the professionals to explain. As CapK points out for foreignians learning English it's pretty much a matter of rote learning.
Actually, as you pointed out in your first post, you need a grammarian. A linguist (as such) ain't what you need for things like modern weak and strong verbs. You also need to have a fascination for detail which is really beyond me, to pick up on the differences.
From memory, fallible as it is, the difference was around vowel shifts. And the funny thing is that some verbs which were weak in Old English are now strong. Weak verbs are also, I believe, regarded as regularly formed while strong verbs are regarded as irregular.
The thing I can't understand, and will probably never see a good explanation for, is why some strong AS verbs survived (e.g. grow/grew) while others didn't (e.g. help/healp became help/helped)
Ain't life grand?
