s. 405. _Drank, drunk, drunken._--With all words wherein the vowel of the plural differs from that of the singular, the participle takes the plural form. To say _I have drunk_, is to use an ambiguous expression; since _drunk_ may be either a participle _minus_ its termination, or a praeterite with a participial sense. To say _I have drank_, is to use a praeterite for a participle. To say _I have drunken_, is to use an unexceptionable form. In all words with a double form, as _spake_ and _spoke_, _brake_ and _broke_, _clave_ and _clove_, the participle follows the form in _o_, as _spoken_, _broken_, _cloven_. _Spaken_, _braken_, _claven_, are impossible forms. There are degrees in laxity of language, and to say _the spear is broke_ is better than to say _the spear is brake_. These two statements bear upon the future history of the praeterite. That of the two forms _sang_ and _sung_, one will, in the course of language, become obsolete is nearly certain; and, as the plural form is also that of the participle, it is the plural form which is most likely to be the surviving one. {352} s. 406. As a general rule, we find the participle in _-en_ wherever the praeterite is strong; indeed, the participle in _-en_ may be called the strong participle, or the participle of the strong conjugation. Still the two forms do not always coincide. In _mow_, _mowed_, _mown_; _sow_, _sowed_, _sown_; and several other words, we find the participle strong, and the praeterite weak. I remember no instances of the converse. This is only another way of saying that the praeterite has a greater tendency to pass from strong to weak than the participle. s. 407. In the Latin language the change from _s_ to _r_, and _vice vers[^a]_, is very common. We have the double forms _arbor_ and _arbos_, _honor_ and _honos_, &c. Of this change we have a few specimens in English. The words _rear_ and _raise_, as compared with each other, are examples. In Anglo-Saxon a few words undergo a similar change in the plural number of the strong praeterites. Ce['o]se, _I choose_; ce['a]s, _I chose_; curon, _we chose_; gecoren, _chosen_. Forle['o]se, _I lose_; forle['a]s, _I lost_; forluron, _we lost_; forloren, _lost_. Hreose, _I rush_; hre['a]s, _I rushed_; hruron, _we rushed_; gehroren, _rushed_. This accounts for the participial form _forlorn_, or _lost_, in New High German _verloren_. In Milton's lines, ---- the piercing air Burns _frore_, and cold performs the effect of fire. _Paradise Lost_, b. ii. we have a form from the Anglo-Saxon participle _gefroren_=_frozen_. s. 408. The participle in _-d_, _-t_, or _-ed_.--In the Anglo-Saxon this participle was declined like the adjective. Like the adjective, it is, in the present English, undeclined.