Tracing an obsolete preterite-present verb: the fates of OE *dugan

The present paper focuses on one of the non-surviving preterite-present verbs, *dugan/deah ‘avail, be of use’. Although the verb exhibited a low frequency, it continued in use throughout Old and Middle English and died out only by the end of the latter period. The exception is some northern dialects and Scottish English, where it still functions as dow ‘to be able, to be willing’. The paper attempts to account for the disappearance of *dugan from English taking under consideration both language internal and external factors. The analysis covers the usage of the verb in question in Old and Middle English as well as its main and peripheral meanings. The comparison of the distribution and sense of *dugan in the two periods shows the plausible causes of its demise, which include semantic bleaching, loss of impersonal constructions from English, and the presence of the closest synonyms of *dugan.