摘要：The Early New High German period is characterized by the reduction of the former four-stage ablaut system (e. g. werfen inf. - warf pret.sg. - würfen prêt. pl. - geworfen past part.) into a three-stage system (werfen - warf-geworfen), involving the loss of the number distinction in the preterite. In earlier approaches this development has been analyzed as being triggered by the functional discrepancy between three tenses and four ablaut stages, or, as put forward by natural morphologists, by the adaptation of the strong verb system to the more natural weak verb pattern. This paper rejects these hypotheses and argues that the development is best attributed to the growing stem allomorphy in the verbal system (due to phonological changes) and the remarkable decrease in the token frequency of verbs in the preterite, which lead to the loss of the least relevant category distinction, i. e. number.
