# Are English irregular verbs becoming a thing of the past?



## Cath.S.

Hi anglophone friends,

I have just read in the current issue of French science magazine Science & Avenir (#768) an short article in which Jean-Baptiste Michel, a graduate student at Harvard University, claims linguistics shows irregular verbs tend to disappear in English. 

His statement is based on the statistical study of a corpus of published books spanning 200 years (1800-2000).

Now my question is as follows: have you noticed such a tendency in your own lifetime? I'd be really interested to know what you natives think about that.

Thank you very much for your insights.


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## RAFABARAJIM

I sincerely hope they do not disappear, of course it would be easier for new learners to use the past tense, but it might be more difficult to understand some expressions or sentences or even convey some meanings, 

GREETINGS FROM MEXICO CITY AKA CHILANGOLANDIA


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## Hermione Golightly

That's one change I haven't noticed at all either in speech or writing, over nearly 70 years.


Hermione


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## Loob

I think it's probably true that irregular verbs in English do tend to regularise themselves over time.  But I can't think of any examples at the moment: I'll try to find some.


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## sandpiperlily

I wouldn't go so far as to say that irregular verbs in general are disappearing, but I have certainly noticed that some irregular verbs are used incorrectly with some... well... regularity!

I believe that a certain amount of this stems from the lack of grammar education in modern schools.  In the 1950s, I believe most public schools explicitly taught grammar in English.  You would know the difference between a subject and an object, past tense and past participle.  Nowadays, many public schools have abandoned this subject and instead just teach kids what's "right" and "wrong" without explaining the structure of the language.  So students either get grammar lessons at home (like I did, but I'm a rare one!), or they figure out grammar when they're forced to learn it for a foreign language class (although teaching grammar in foreign language classrooms is also going out of fashion in the US), or they never learn these things at all.  

So if kids never learn the difference between past and past participle, for example, it's no surprise that they use "showed" and "shown" incorrectly... or just drop "shown" from their vocabularies altogether.

My pet peeve example is the difference between the verbs "to lay" and "to lie." Both are somewhat irregular, and many people confuse the two and conjugate each incorrectly.

Another thing to take into consideration is that some dialects of English (such as African American Vernacular English) conjugate many common irregular verbs differently than in Standard American English.  Millions of people are fluent in both AAVE and Standard American English, and manage to use these verbs perfectly in both dialects.  However, a lot of children are brought up speaking AAVE and never really learn standard grammar through the school system, so they import new irregularities and ignore existing ones when they speak Standard American English.


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## wildan1

Per this blog entry: _the half-life of an irregular verb is inversely proportional to the square root of its frequency._

I think that's a fancy way of saying that infrequently used verbs get regularized more quickly than verbs we use all the time.

The verb that comes to mind as differing according to meaning is _to hang_

_1. They *hung* the picture on the wall._
_2. When they captured the tyrant they *hanged* him. _

Happily nowadays, #1 is far more frequently used than #2. I wonder if #2 was always regular?

I cannot think of any irregular/strong verbs that have changed in my 50+ years of speaking English natively, however. Nor can I account for the other 150 years in the study!


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## Cath.S.

Thanks to all who responded so far. 

Sandpiperlily,
you may have a point but surely when they first appeared those irregular forms did not arise from grammar teachers and were born, let's say, in a natural way, just through everyday common (and mainly oral, at that) usage, so surely their fate does not solely depend on whether the difference between past tense and past participle is, or isn't, taught in schools, don't you think?

Georgefrench,
I am sure that the fact more and more non-native speakers use English will alter your language, but I would think that, on the contrary, it will become more simple and understandable. Global economy is one of the reasons more people have to express themselves in English, mostly for business purposes, and economic exchanges have to be accessible to the majority, as it is a matter of survival.

Wildan,
thanks for the interesting link, it has _holpen_ me. 

In the meantime, especially after reading the example of help that was once a strong verb, I wondered whether its becoming regular was not connected to the fact that the noun is _help_, and not _holp_, since there seems to be a tendency to derive verbs from nouns. 

This is particularly true with new additions to language, verbs created from brand names for instance.
_
E.g.
Google_ gives us _to google_, a regular verb (past _googled_, past participle _googled_).
So there seems to be at least one unquestionable fact; all new verbs will be regular.


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## Loob

Here's one that occurs to me: _dive_.

This previous thread indicates that the past tense _dove_ is still alive and well in some varieties of AmE, whereas it's dead - I would say - in BrE.


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## sandpiperlily

Cath.S. said:


> Thanks to all who responded so far.
> 
> Sandpiperlily,
> you may have a point but surely when they first appeared those irregular forms did not arise from grammar teachers and were born, let's say, in a natural way, just through everyday common (and mainly oral, at that) usage, so surely their fate does not solely depend on whether the difference between past tense and past participle is, or isn't, taught in schools, don't you think?



I absolutely agree with you.  I don't believe that education accounts for all of the change in language over time, but since the period of time studied was 1800-2000, I imagine that formal schooling is a big part of the answer.



Loob said:


> Here's one that occurs to me: _dive_.
> 
> This previous thread indicates that the past tense _dove_ is still alive and well in some varieties of AmE, whereas it's dead - I would say - in BrE.



Fascinating!  I've always said "dove" and considered "dived" to be incorrect; I had no idea that BrE had adoped "dived."


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## Myridon

wildan1 said:


> Per this blog entry: _the half-life of an irregular verb is inversely proportional to the square root of its frequency._


It works the other way around as well though. The weak verb dive/dived/dived is well on the way to becoming dive/dove/dove thanks to the popularity of the strong verb drive/drove/driven. Since it's not dive/dove/diven, it follows neither regular pattern and both forms (dived/dove) are acceptable at the moment which is also unusual.


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## JulianStuart

Jean-Baptiste Michel was a coauthor on this 2007 paper http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v449/n7163/abs/nature06137.html* published in Nature (one of the premier general science journals) and the abstract contains the following 4 sentences : 



> Nature 449, 713-716 (11 October 2007)
> *Lieberman, Michel, Jackson, Tang and Nowak* wrote:
> ... We have generated a data set of verbs whose conjugations have been evolving for more than a millennium, tracking inflectional changes to 177 Old-English irregular verbs. Of these irregular verbs, 145 remained irregular in Middle English and 98 are still irregular today. We study how the rate of regularization depends on the frequency of word usage. The half-life of an irregular verb scales as the square root of its usage frequency: a verb that is 100 times less frequent regularizes 10 times as fast. ....



The less frequently a verb is used, the sooner it succumbs to "regularization".
QED 

See the presentation of the data in this Figure 
* Link to the abstract only ; full paper requires purchase.


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## Fabulist

"Regular" and "irregular" are of course incorrect terms.

_Strong_ verbs, a feature of all Germanic languages (I can't give examples from other languages here), are inflected in part by changes in their internal vowel; in some verbs, the past participal ends in _-en_ or _-n_.

_Weak_ verbs, in contrast, are inflected by the additional of a voiced or unvoiced dental stop (written in English with the letters _d_ and _t_); in English, this inflectional ending is usually written with the letters _-d_ or _-ed_, although it may be prounced with the sound usually written with the letter _t. _A few weak verbs also have an internal vowel change (bring/brought/brought; fight/fought/fought; the _t_ at the end marks these as weak verbs).

For a long time (hundreds of years), English has formed only new weak verbs; all strong verbs are descendents of at least the Old English (before about 1100) period. As weak verbs have become more frequent, their forms have been applied to strong verbs, adding the dental stop to the present-tense form; and these "incorrect" forms have, by usage, driven out strong forms and become "correct." I know of another Germanic language in which new verbs are predominantly or exclusively weak, also. That language often makes verbs by compounding, and when the root verb is strong, so is the new compound. However, verbs made from foreign words have a standard suffix, cognate to English _-ize/-ise,_ that produces a weak verb. It may be that no _new_ weak verbs are being formed in that or any of the other German languages.

While some individual verbs have moved from the strong to the weak inflectional pattern, these verbs have not "disappeared." Some verbs, as well as some nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions, have become obsolete over time. Since new verbs are always weak in English, the proportion of all verbs that are strong shows a long-term reduction, but there is no sign that strong verbs like _to come_ and _to sing_ will soon become weak: come/comed/comed, sing/singed/singed. Young children, hearing the -ed pattern most often, may use such forms when the first begin using such verbs, but they soon learn the standard inflectional pattern.

There is nothing "irregular" about strong verbs in English. There is a limited number of internal vowel changes. A common one is the -i-/-a- or -u-/-u- sequence, seen in _cling, drink, shrink, sing, sink, slink, spin, spring, sting, swim, swing,_ and _wring_. There are other patterns that are found across many different verbs.

The terms "strong" and "weak" are arbitrary, translated from the work of German philologists, who also use "strong" and "weak" to describe inflectional patterns of adjectives in their language.


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## sandpiperlily

Fabulist said:


> "Regular" and "irregular" are of course incorrect terms.
> 
> _Strong_ verbs, a feature of all Germanic languages (I can't give examples from other languages here), are inflected in part by changes in their internal vowel; in some verbs, the past participal ends in _-en_ or _-n_.
> 
> _Weak_ verbs, in contrast, are inflected by the additional of a voiced or unvoiced dental stop (written in English with the letters _d_ and _t_); in English, this inflectional ending is usually written with the letters _-d_ or _-ed_, although it may be prounced with the sound usually written with the letter _t. _A few weak verbs also have an internal vowel change (bring/brought/brought; fight/fought/fought; the _t_ at the end marks these as weak verbs).



Very interesting; I had never heard this distinction.  Thanks for enlightening us!

I still don't see how truly crazy verbs, like "to be" and "to go" fit into this pattern, however.


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## JulianStuart

The original publication does not say the _word_ disappeared.  Its focus is on analysis of the "regularization" phenomenon  i.e. the perceived _irregularity_ is what disappears and the verb form changes from "weird" to "normal". (I'll refrain from making a fool of myself by using technical words for which I don't know the field's precise definition!)
I suspect in the full version of the article, they will have defined their terms and source of the data they used for the analysis.  I didn't purchase the article but provided the link to the presentation of the analysis results.)


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## Fabulist

sandpiperlily said:


> Very interesting; I had never heard this distinction. Thanks for enlightening us!
> 
> I still don't see how truly crazy verbs, like "to be" and "to go" fit into this pattern, however.


 
"To be" and "to go" can reasonably be described as "irregular."

_Go_ was a regular strong verb, as can be seen by the past participle, _gone,_ with the _-n_ sound at the end. In German, the comparable verb has a "strong" pattern. "Went" was introduced into English in the 10th and 11th centuries by Scandinavians speaking a North Germanic instead of a West Germanic dialect. How it came to displace the regular Old English or Anglo-Saxon past forms of the verb "to go" (which had a different form at that time), I don't know.

_Be_ also has a mixture of strong and introduced forms; as with _go, _the past participle (_been_) shows the strong form with an _-n_ at the end instead of a _-d_ or _-t. _The modern German verb is not regular, either, but has to be memorized. At some point early in the development of Indo-European, this very common verb developed exceptions to the standard verbal patterns. In another older language I have studied, Latin, the comparable verb also does not follow exactly any of the five standard patterns (conjugations), and has to be memorized.


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## ribran

Many educated people I know struggle to recall the correct past participle of the verb to _drink_. I routinely hear _drank_, _drunken_, _dranken_, even _drinken_, but rarely do I hear plain old _drunk_.


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## JulianStuart

I don't think there is a fundamental disagreement here on the changes going on here, except perhaps the terms - the authors use a word "irregular" but provide a specific meaning for this term - maybe only for this analysis, even.  They test the hypothesis that the less frequently a "strong" or "irregular" (or my term _weird_) verb is used, the more likely it is to change and become "regular" or "weak" (or _normal_!)





Fabulist said:


> "Regular" and "irregular" are of course incorrect terms.
> 
> _Strong_ verbs, a feature of all Germanic languages (I can't give examples from other languages here), are inflected in part by changes in their internal vowel; in some verbs, the past participal ends in _-en_ or _-n_.
> 
> _Weak_ verbs, in contrast, are inflected by the additional of a voiced or unvoiced dental stop (written in English with the letters _d_ and _t_); in English, this inflectional ending is usually written with the letters _-d_ or _-ed_, although it may be prounced with the sound usually written with the letter _t. _A few weak verbs also have an internal vowel change (bring/brought/brought; fight/fought/fought; the _t_ at the end marks these as weak verbs).


Even in the _abstract_ of the article that elicited the OP's post, they describe what they mean by irregular (I would expect more detailed description in the article itself!)


> *Although an elaborate system of productive conjugations existed in English’s proto-Germanic ancestor, Modern English uses the dental suffix, ‘-ed’, to signify past tense. Here we describe the emergence of this linguistic rule amidst the evolutionary decay of its exceptions, known to us as irregular verbs*





Fabulist said:


> For a long time (hundreds of years), English has formed only new weak verbs; all strong verbs are descendents of at least the Old English (before about 1100) period.  *As weak verbs have become more frequent, their forms have been applied to strong verbs, *adding the dental stop to the present-tense form; *and* these "incorrect" forms have,* by usage, driven out strong forms *and become "correct.*"  *(JS's emphasis added)
> .....
> While some individual verbs have moved from the strong to the weak inflectional pattern, these verbs have not "disappeared."


Indeed, and the original article never claimed that : they have become "regularized", in the jargon defined in the paper cited.  "weak drives out strong" may be a succinct definition of what they mean by "regularization".





Fabulist said:


> Since new verbs are always weak in English, the proportion of all verbs that are strong shows a long-term reduction, but there is no sign that strong verbs like _to come_ and _to sing_ will soon become weak: come/comed/comed, sing/singed/singed.


Come and sing are used quite frequently, so they are NOT conceived of as candidates for "regularization" 





Fabulist said:


> Young children, hearing the -ed pattern most often, may use such forms when the first begin using such verbs, but they soon learn the standard inflectional pattern.


But the frequency with which they hear this "standard pattern"  will determine how well they will learn it.  That is the thesis that the analysis of the data supports.


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## Fabulist

I don't have access to the original article; I was responding to the original post and the terms used in it.


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## JulianStuart

Fabulist said:


> I don't have access to the original article; I was responding to the original post and the terms used in it.


I haven't even seen the article the OP referenced but it must refer to the original work for which I gave a link in Post 13.  There, the abstract can be read and the substance to which the OP referred is what I was quoting from.  I think the OP was either misled (or mis-wrote) that the verbs themselves disappear.


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## Cath.S.

The article I quoted from is a very recent interview of Jean-Baptiste Michel, and the words he uses can be literally translated (and don't have any hidden meaning) to
_we have shown that in English, *irregular *verbs tend to *disappear*._
The study he is referring to is a statistical one, made possible by the digitisation of 4.2 million books, which is, according to him, 4% of all books ever written.
I am not saying he is correct, I'm just reporting what I read.


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## Elle Paris

I have noticed that I avoid certain verbs because my brain cannot sort the data concerning them any more.

get got got/gotten ...up? over?
awaken awoke awoken
wake woke woke/woken? up? too hazy to use for me these days!


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## natkretep

_Gotten_ has largely disappeared from BE - therefore change in the direction of regularisation.
_Dove_ (v. _dived_) has been mentioned - the OED says that this was used from the 18th century in AE and some British dialects, and _dived_ is the older form - so an irregular form was introduced.
_Snuck_ (v. _sneaked_) similarly originated in AE - another irregular form.

It's not clear to me that irregular verbs are going away!


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## Sedulia

I love irregular verbs, but even quite common ones are disappearing, especially in the U.S.A. because there are so many immigrants, but also in the U.K., and in both places the reason is mainly that people don't read books. I've heard educated people say "he drunk" or "the ship sunk" and a major Hollywood movie was called "I Shrunk the Kids." New York Times reporters write that somebody "weaved through the crowd" or "kneeled down" or "the sun shined." If you use some irregular verbs correctly, almost no one even recognizes them. "Throve," anyone? That's why I was thrilled when J.K. Rowling wrote that Harry Potter "span around."

When I was a child, a lot of people knew the difference between "lie" and "lay." Now, I don't think a single young American does. 

I'll be sad when they go!


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## Fabulist

_Dove_ is probably by analogy to another common Anglo-Saxon verb, _drive_.  The analogy has not extended to the past participle—it's dive/dove/dived, not dive/dove/*diven as would be the case if _dive _were of the same class of Anglo-Saxon strong verbs as _drive._

I've looked at a list of "irregular" English verbs but can't find an -ea-/-u- analog for _sneak._  By analogy to other verbs, we might expect sneak/*snoke/*snoken (analogy to _speak, break_) or sneak/*snake/*snoken (analogy to speak/obs. spake).  Note that, like _dive,_ this faux strong verb also retains a weak past participle.  People who use the non-standard _snuck_ say _have sneaked,_ not _have snoken _or _have snuck_ (by analogy,say, to strike/struck/struck)_._

Neither of the dictionaries on my shelf recognizes "snuck" as a possible preterite.  There was a thread here about "snuck" a while ago.


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## Cath.S.

Sedulia said:


> I love irregular verbs, (...)
> 
> I'll be sad when they go!


I love them too, especially since they gave me such a hard time when I was a young student , learning them by rote, neat lists in alphabetical order. But somehow I don't think I'll still be around by the time they totally disappear.

Fabulist,


> .  People who use the non-standard _snuck_ say _have sneaked,_ not _have snoken _or _have snuck_ (by analogy,say, to strike/struck/struck)_._


Don't shoot the messenger, but I'm afraid I am the bearer of bad news.


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## sandpiperlily

Sedulia said:


> When I was a child, a lot of people knew the difference between "lie" and "lay." Now, I don't think a single young American does.



I'm not sure how you define "young," but I'm 23 and I do!  I'm probably in the minority among my peers, though.


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## wildan1

Cath.S. said:


> The study he is referring to is a statistical one, made possible by the digitisation of 4.2 million books, which is, according to him, 4% of all books ever written.
> I am not saying he is correct, I'm just reporting what I read.


There is probably a bias here--what people say every day and what those who write and get books published are often not exactly the same.

Too bad the study didn't look at spoken language (I admit that is hard to going back more than 60-70 years ago, but still). 

That suggests there is a fundamental flaw in the argument if he is not distingushing between spoken and written forms of the language...


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## Fabulist

Sedulia said:


> I love irregular verbs, but even quite common ones are disappearing, especially in the U.S.A. because there are so many immigrants, but also in the U.K., and in both places the reason is mainly that people don't read books. I've heard educated people say "he drunk" or "the ship sunk" and a major Hollywood movie was called "I Shrunk the Kids."


 
Some of the _-i-/-a-/-u-_ verbs have an alternative _-u-_ past or preterite form.  The _SOED_ accepts this for _sink_ but not for _shrink;_ the _American Heritage Dictionary_ accepts it for both verbs.  I haven't checked all of the verbs of the _-i-/-a-/-u-_ class.  I learned only _shrank_ and _sank._  I don't know whether the _-i-/-u-/-u-_ pattern is personal, regional, or dialectical.


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## Cath.S.

wildan1 said:


> There is probably a bias here--what people say every day and what those who write and get books published are often not exactly the same.
> 
> Too bad the study didn't look at spoken language (I admit that is hard to going back more than 60-70 years ago, but still).
> 
> That suggests there is a fundamental flaw in the argument if he is not distingushing between spoken and written forms of the language...


You certainly have a point there, Wildan, but wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that people who write books are often more educated than those who don't, in any case more careful about their word choice? If we agree on that, then we could logically imagine that in spoken English, people would tend to use the irregular forms of strong verbs even less often than professional writers, couldn't we?


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## mplsray

Myridon said:


> It works the other way around as well though. The weak verb dive/dived/dived is well on the way to becoming dive/dove/dove thanks to the popularity of the strong verb drive/drove/driven. Since it's not dive/dove/diven, it follows neither regular pattern and both forms (dived/dove) are acceptable at the moment which is also unusual.



For the record, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, there were both strong and weak forms in Old English of the verb which lead to our _dive_ but the current strong past and past participle form _dove_ is a separate matter. As the OED puts it, "the modern dialect past tense _dove_ is apparently a new formation after _drive, drove,_ or _weave, wove._"

To answer the questions posed by the original poster, (1) I have not personally noticed the change from strong to weak forms, but (2) the answer to the question in the topic title--Are irregular verbs [strong verbs] becoming a thing of the past?--is "No.," since it is a rather over-the-top exaggeration of what change actually is occurring.


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## Forero

The Modern English paradigm of "to be" is essentially the same as in Old English (Olde Englisc, Anglo-Saxon), but involves forms from four different PIE verbs:

_am_/_is_, related to German _ist_ and Latin _sum_, _est_, etc.,
_are_, related to Latin _eris_, _erat_, etc.,
_was_, related to German _war_, _gewesen_, etc., and
_be_/_been_, related to German _bin_, _bist_ and Latin _futuro_, _fueram_, etc.

[...]
I am not sure if all new verbs are regular.


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## ribran

Sedulia said:


> I love irregular verbs, but even quite common ones are disappearing, especially in the U.S.A. because there are so many immigrants, but also in the U.K., and in both places the reason is mainly that people don't read books. I've heard educated people say "he drunk" or "the ship sunk" and a major Hollywood movie was called "I Shrunk the Kids." New York Times reporters write that somebody "weaved through the crowd" or "kneeled down" or "the sun shined." If you use some irregular verbs correctly, almost no one even recognizes them. "Throve," anyone? That's why I was thrilled when J.K. Rowling wrote that Harry Potter "span around."
> 
> When I was a child, a lot of people knew the difference between "lie" and "lay." Now, I don't think a single young American does.
> 
> I'll be sad when they go!



Well, some of us do! 

I've got a splitting headache! I think I'll go and lie down.


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## JulianStuart

Cath.S. said:


> The article I quoted from is a very recent interview of Jean-Baptiste Michel, and the words he uses can be literally translated (and don't have any hidden meaning) to
> _we have shown that in English, *irregular *verbs tend to *disappear*._
> The study he is referring to is a statistical one, made possible by the digitisation of 4.2 million books, which is, according to him, 4% of all books ever written.
> I am not saying he is correct, I'm just reporting what I read.






> Nature 449, 713-716 (11 October 2007)
> *Lieberman, Michel, Jackson, Tang and Nowak* wrote:
> ... We have generated* a data set of verbs* whose conjugations have been  evolving for more than a millennium, tracking inflectiona*l changes to  177 Old-English irregular verbs. Of these irregular verbs, 145 remained  irregular in Middle English and 98 are still irregular today.* We study  how the rate of regularization depends on the frequency of word usage.  The half-life of an irregular verb scales as the square root of its  usage frequency: a verb that is 100 times less frequent regularizes 10  times as fast. ....



Cath, The quote above is the abstract from the major study published in Nature* where, in 2007 (only 3 years ago), they make no mention of verbs disappearing, only the irregularity disappears.  Either they have done a new study discovering that many verbs have actually disappeared or the translation refers to the disappearance of the irregularity.  Can you provide any link or source to that interview or reference/description of the study?


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## ewie

*Moderator note:* The nice folks at Etymology  and History of Language have agreed to host this thread provided it  stays nicely on the topic set out in the original question.
Thanks for your patience


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## berndf

See also this related thread.


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## OBrasilo

Fabulist said:


> "To be" and "to go" can reasonably be described as "irregular."
> 
> _Go_ was a regular strong verb, as can be seen by the past participle, _gone,_ with the _-n_ sound at the end. In German, the comparable verb has a "strong" pattern. "Went" was introduced into English in the 10th and 11th centuries by Scandinavians speaking a North Germanic instead of a West Germanic dialect. How it came to displace the regular Old English or Anglo-Saxon past forms of the verb "to go" (which had a different form at that time), I don't know.
> 
> _Be_ also has a mixture of strong and introduced forms; as with _go, _the past participle (_been_) shows the strong form with an _-n_ at the end instead of a _-d_ or _-t. _The modern German verb is not regular, either, but has to be memorized. At some point early in the development of Indo-European, this very common verb developed exceptions to the standard verbal patterns. In another older language I have studied, Latin, the comparable verb also does not follow exactly any of the five standard patterns (conjugations), and has to be memorized.



Go was NOT a regular strong verb even in Old English. Its past tense came from another verb. "I went" was _Ic eode_.
In German, the past tense is from a verb ging-, if I recall correctly, "I went" is _Ich ginge_.

In any case, English does show a tendency of going from strong to weak. Confront help/halp/hulp to modern help/helped/helped, for example.


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## ewie

OBrasilo said:


> Go was NOT a regular strong verb even in Old English. Its past tense came from another verb. "I went" was _Ic eode_.


 The Modern English verb _go_ is actually two Anglo-Saxon verbs welded together: _gan_ and _(ge)wendan_.

(_Be_ is the same: _beon_ and _wesan_.)


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## Cath.S.

ewie said:


> *Moderator note:* The nice folks at Etymology  and History of Language have agreed to host this thread provided it  stays nicely on the topic set out in the original question.
> Thanks for your patience


Thanks to_ everybody _who makes this thread possible, mods and contributors alike.
I read every contribution with great interest and delight.

The related thread berndf gave a link to made me think that since all the older, strong English verbs seem to express basic human actions, if our society shifts towards a more abstract approach of the world, those basic verbs could very well disappear in the long run,_ eat _could become obsolete some day and be replaced by _nourish,_ _sleep_ by _rest_ _etc._

Just an idea.


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## sanne78

I have noticed that verbs like to dream and to learn seem to have become regular.

I have always said: *to dream -dreamt - dreamt* and *to learn - learnt -learnt*, and was therefore very surprised to hear/read: *dreamed* and *learned*.

Is this a difference between BE and AE or is this a shift from irregular to regular (as the title of this thread suggests)?


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## natkretep

AE has completely regularised to _dreamed, kneeled, learned, leaned_, etc.

BE has for a long time allowed either _dreamed_ or _dreamt_, _kneeled_ or _knelt_, _learned_ or _learnt_, _leaned_ or _leant_. It's not clear to me whether one form is dominating.


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## Forero

I have noticed things like "The former governor pleaded guilty to ...", where I would expect "pled guilty". (This may be a case of change over time, or it may be a case of my favorite newpaper being bought out by its long-time competitor.)

To me, _pleaded_ would be appropriate in "She pleaded with them to spare her son."

I grew up with "I grabbed the vine and swung across the creek", but now I hear "swang across the creek". This may be regularization or the opposite since we have lots of _i_ - _u_ - _u_ verbs as well as lots of  _i_ - _a_ -_ u_ verbs. As far as I know, no one says _flang_ for _flung_ or _clang_ for _clung_.

Come to think of it,  I would say _stank_, but _stunk_ as past tense seems to be gaining ground.


----------



## Walshie79

Forero said:


> I have noticed things like "The former governor pleaded guilty to ...", where I would expect "pled guilty". (This may be a case of change over time, or it may be a case of my favorite newpaper being bought out by its long-time competitor.)
> 
> To me, _pleaded_ would be appropriate in "She pleaded with them to spare her son."
> 
> Come to think of it, I would say _stank_, but _stunk_ as past tense seems to be gaining ground.


 
It's always _pleaded guilty_ in BrEng. At least, I've never heard _pled_. I was once really surprised to hear a Canadian say _improven_ as the past participle of _improve_. (Had never heard that in Britain, it does vary here between _proved_ and _proven_ although I tend to associate the latter with Scottish speakers).

In this part of England the past tense of _write_ is commonly _writ_, rhyming with _bit_. 

As for some other "are they strong or weak" verbs; I think _strive_ is about 50-50 for modern British speakers; I'd probably write _strove/striven_ though _strived_ doesn't sound inherently "wrong" like _drived,_ for example, would. _Thrive_ I'd say is now a weak verb for the majority; _thriven_ in particular does come across as rather old-fashioned.


----------



## berndf

Walshie79 said:


> It's always _pleaded guilty_ in BrEng. At least, I've never heard _pled_. I was once really surprised to hear a Canadian say _improven_ as the past participle of _improve_. (Had never heard that in Britain, it does vary here between _proved_ and _proven_ although I tend to associate the latter with Scottish speakers).


None of the two, _to plead & to prove_, are original strong verb but they are both French loans where the irregular forms are constructions by analogy.


----------



## Babel3000

sandpiperlily said:


> I still don't see how truly crazy verbs, like "to be" and "to go" fit into this pattern, however.


 
Many French verbs are that 'strange'. The indicative form is sometimes very different from the _I, you (singular), he, she, they_ normal forms (at the simple present tense for example). Most of the times the _we_ and _you (plural)_ form are 'closer' to the indicative form.To be, to have, to say, to go are some examples.

*Aller* (to go)
je vais (I go)
Tu vas (you go)
Il/elle va (he/she goes)
Nous *allons* (we go)
Vous *allez* (you go)
Ils/elles vont (they go)

This pattern goes for some Italian and Spanish verbs too (maybe Portuguese too), my Latin grammar is not too good but it might come from there (and/or Greek) since these South European languages come from Latin and Greek.


----------



## Cath.S.

Hi Babel 3000, 
_aller _is pretty unique and its different forms come from three separate Latin verbs,_ ambulare, ire_ and _vadere_ (further details here).
But these irregular forms tend to remain totally stable in French, no adult ever says "j'alle" or "ils alleront" instead of _je vais _and_ ils iront._ They might in centuries to come, though, since today a true tendency towards regularization of French verbs appears in the fact that all the new verbs that are created these days seem to follow the regular pattern of the first group: infinitive in -er, consistant conjugation rules and easy-to-build past participles in _é_.


----------



## sandpiperlily

natkretep said:


> AE has completely regularised to _dreamed, kneeled, learned, leaned_, etc.
> 
> BE has for a long time allowed either _dreamed_ or _dreamt_, _kneeled_ or _knelt_, _learned_ or _learnt_, _leaned_ or _leant_. It's not clear to me whether one form is dominating.



Interesting.  I would say that "knelt" and "dreamt" are in fairly common use in American English (at least among some groups), although "learnt" and "leant" are not.


----------



## Alxmrphi

sandpiperlily said:


> Interesting.  I would say that "knelt" and "dreamt" are in fairly common use in American English (at least among some groups), although "learnt" and "leant" are not.



Even in spelling sandpiperlily?
Both forms are acceptable in BE so I just wondered if you were referring to pronunciation or spelling.


----------



## go4kevin

I agree with his statement. It seems to me that due to the extrem laziness of most English speakers, the language has become very fluid malleable. This is not at all a bad thing, I feel as though this is the reason English has an extremely large lexicon of words, and that this laziness and thus fluidity and malleability of the language is the very reason English has so may ways of expressing thoughts and feelings. Though back to the point at hand, irregular verbs becoming regular. Take the verb 'to learn' for example, in the past tense learn is traditionally 'learnt'. However, learnt is, to the modern english speaker, a very awkward construction (not to mention how awkward it is to say), thus modern English speakers tend to say 'learned'; a regularization of an irregular verb.


----------



## Elle Paris

Cath.S. said:


> Hi Babel 3000,
> _aller _is pretty unique and its different forms come from three separate Latin verbs,_ ambulare, ire_ and _vadere_ (further details here).
> But these irregular forms tend to remain totally stable in French, no adult ever says "j'alle" or "ils alleront" instead of _je vais _and_ ils iront._ They might in centuries to come, though, since today a true tendency towards regularization of French verbs appears in the fact that all the new verbs that are created these days seem to follow the regular pattern of the first group: infinitive in -er, consistant conjugation rules and easy-to-build past participles in _é_.


 

  In Charente-Maritime, there are people, older and younger than I, who still say j'alle, ils alleront and j'allons (whatever _that_ is!)!


----------



## Alxmrphi

go4kevin said:


> Take the verb 'to learn' for example, in the past tense learn is traditionally 'learnt'. However, learnt is, to the modern english speaker, a very awkward construction (not to mention how awkward it is to say), thus modern English speakers tend to say 'learned'; a regularization of an irregular verb.



1) wrong.
2) wrong.

Please speak on behalf of your version of English and do not generalise to others. This is very normal and universally accepted in British English. We do not find it 'awkward' at all (Learn @ Oxford).


----------



## artion

wildan1 said:


> Per this blog entry: _the half-life of an irregular verb is inversely proportional to the square root of its frequency._



Sounds very scientific but is it true? I have an empirical impression that this doesn't happen. In many languages (even in japanese) the verbs of important human activities are irregular: Eat, go, do, speak, see etc. These verbs must have a high frequency but remained irregular for centuries.


----------



## sandpiperlily

sandpiperlily said:
			
		

> Interesting. I would say that "knelt" and "dreamt" are in fairly common use in American English (at least among some groups), although "learnt" and "leant" are not.





Alxmrphi said:


> Even in spelling sandpiperlily?
> Both forms are acceptable in BE so I just wondered if you were referring to pronunciation or spelling.



Both pronunciation and spelling.


----------



## JulianStuart

artion said:


> Sounds very scientific but is it true? I have an empirical impression that this doesn't happen. In many languages (even in japanese) the verbs of important human activities are irregular: Eat, go, do, speak, see etc. These verbs must have a high frequency but remained irregular for centuries.


The blog entry is not quite what the original authors said (the blog quote above has inserted the word inversely and now is opposite of the truth - don't believe all you read in blogs !). The original published study contains the following in the abstract of the paper (see post #11)


> The half-life of an irregular verb scales as the square root of its  usage frequency: *a verb that is 100 times less frequent regularizes 10  times as fast. ....*


This can be said as "If irregular verbs are frequently used, they will regularize very slowly, if at all, compared to those that are not used frequently" They provide a mathematical analysis and a quantitative measure of the relationship.  This is an issue of familiarity, not "laziness".

There is an interesting experiment that was done in 2002 to evaluate how readers reacted to a verb that was 100% unfamiliar to everyone involved - it was a made-up word : _splink_.  Readers were asked to convert the verb to the past form in a text; if the surrounding text contained a lot of verbs that went from ink- to -ank (sink to sank) they wrote splank more frequently; however, if the text contained a lot of forms like blinked, they wrote splinked more often!  Clearly "frequency" is not the only parameter that can affect regularization rates.

One living example of the regularization (as _defined_ by the authors simply as transforming to a -ed form from some other form) - verbs ending in cast; a small group admittedly but in transition:  Much of the spoken English I hear (aside from the occasional BBC world news ) is on the US media and _broadcasted_ and _forecasted_ are getting more frequently used (weather forecasters are the prime sinners ), where the original is/was/will soon have become(?) simply cast at the end.

Irregular verbs don't _really_ disappear they just disappear from the list of irregular verbs and get moved to the list of regular verbs


----------



## ewie

Sedulia said:


> When I was a child, a lot of people knew the difference between "lie" and "lay." Now, I don't think a single young American does.


When I was a child, growing up in medieval East Lancashire (northwest England), _nobody_ knew the difference between _lie_ and _lay_.
They still don't


sanne78 said:


> Is this a difference between BE and AE or is this a shift from irregular to regular (as the title of this thread suggests)?


I've noticed a definite tendency in my own speech (and even writing) to regularize certain verbs such as _lean,_ so now I might say _leaned_ [li:nd] where in the past I would always have said _leant_ [lent].  (I'm sure there are one or two more, but my mind's gone blank.)


----------



## Elle Paris

sandpiperlily said:


> Interesting. I would say that "knelt" and "dreamt" are in fairly common use in American English (at least among some groups), although "learnt" and "leant" are not.


 
I have noticed that I tend to say "I learned that a long time ago.", whereas I will also say "I have learnt that 'A stitch in time saves nine.'."
So then I guess my personal conjugation is " learn learned learnt " !

Interesting to note that Google's spellcheck admits both "learned" and "learnt" but not "leant" (or "Google's !).


----------



## JulianStuart

ewie said:


> When I was a child, growing up in medieval East Lancashire (northwest England), _nobody_ knew the difference between _lie_ and _lay_.
> They still don't
> 
> I've noticed a definite tendency in my own speech (and even writing) to regularize certain verbs such as _lean,_ so now I might say _leaned_ [li:nd] where in the past I would always have said _leant_ [lent].  (I'm sure there are one or two more, but my mind's gone blank.)



If your mind goes "on the blink", is the result a blank mind?  Or is that not what you meaned


----------



## ewie

I read this the other day, from a newspaper account of a funeral that took place in 1908:


> Shortly after the public men had left the Town Hall the cortege hove in sight.


... and I thought to myself, _Hove? whassat? I don't even know what that's the past tense _of_! heave? hive? erm?_


----------



## JulianStuart

"Heave to, me hearties, so we can board them!" Hove appears to be a "_naut._" past* form of heave.  Quite different from _heaved_ 

* Edited after berndf's comment.  My original intent was only to indicate a past form of some kind and lacked precision.  To add to those comments (but not contest them), 
From my (old 2 vol "compact" ) OED head entry for heave.



> *heave*: _v._ pa.t. and pple. *heaved, hove. *Forms : (and then lots of variations and history)


----------



## berndf

JulianStuart said:


> "Hove appears to be the "_naut._" pp. of heave.


In this case past tense, not past participle. The ModE. strong conjugation is _heave, hove, hove_; from ME _heven _(inf.), _heve _(pres.), _hove _(past), _-hoven _or _-heven _(ppl); from OE (WS) _hebban_ (inf.), _ic hebbe_, _þu hefst, he hefþ_ (pres.), _hof_ (past), _-hafen_ (ppl.).

Weak and strong forms are attested side-by-side since late ME. In OE and early ME, only the strong form is attested.


----------



## Forero

_Heave_ is not a very common verb, but I have certainly heard _hove_ as a past tense in the transitive sense "threw or dragged <something heavy>".


----------



## JulianStuart

berndf said:


> In this case past tense, not past participle. The ModE. strong conjugation is _heave, hove, hove_; from ME _heven _(inf.), _heve _(pres.), _hove _(past), _-hoven _or _-heven _(ppl); from OE (WS) _hebban_ (inf.), _ic hebbe_, _þu hefst, he hefþ_ (pres.), _hof_ (past), _-hafen_ (ppl.).
> 
> Weak and strong forms are attested side-by-side since late ME. In OE and early ME, only the strong form is attested.



Thanks for the catch.  I have edited that post to be less precise, but added a note from the OED which may have influenced my original.


----------



## ewie

Yes, thanks Bernd, I honestly didn't know what verb I was dealing with there


----------



## berndf

As we are collecting variations: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED20701 .


----------



## natkretep

Elle Paris said:


> Interesting to note that Google's spellcheck admits both "learned" and "learnt" but not "leant" (or "Google's !).



OK, so it looks like the AE stuation is a little more complicated than I imagined! 

My spellcheck, set to BE, allows both _learnt _and _leant_ (as well as the _-ed_ versions).

Also interesting that both Standard AE and BE only allow _meant_.


----------



## sandpiperlily

natkretep said:


> Also interesting that both Standard AE and BE only allow _meant_.



Does anyone allow *meaned*?  Don't think I've ever heard that one.


----------



## JulianStuart

sandpiperlily said:


> Do anyone allow *meaned*?  Don't think I've ever heard that one.



Only in the compound _demeaned_.

Or, at a pinch, in statistics

But those probably aren't what you mean.


----------



## JuanEscritor

The paradigms of verbs ending in nasals are indeed all over the place.  For example, I can combine voiced and voiceless alternatives in the same utterance for the same form!  I usually spell them the same, however; the main difference is in speaking.  I generally think the 'irregular' forms sound more classy, and definitely more folksy.

For me the first choice for past tense is more usual, and I may only say the second alternative rarely (pronunciations approximate):

_lean, leaned_ (/lind/ or /lint/)
_loan, loaned _(/lond/)or _lent _(lɛnt)
_lend, lent _(/lɛnt/) or _lended _(/lɛndəd/)
_learn, learned _(/lərnt/ or /lərnd/)_ 
burn, burned _(/bərnt/ or /bərnd/)
_dream, dreamed_ (/drɛmt/ or /drimd/)
_plead, pled _(/plɛd/)
_kneel, knelt _(/nɛlt/)or _kneeled_ (/nild/)
_drag, drug _(/drʌg/) or _dragged_ (/drægd/)

For the following, there are no alternatives for me:

_get, got, gotten
prove, proved, proven
improve, improved, improved
drive, drove, driven 
write, wrote, written _(for me _writ_ is only a noun, being that thing courts give orders with)

And of course, there are many other examples that could be brought up.  To answer the initial question, though, I'd say 'irregular' verbs are here to stay for quite some while!

JE


----------



## natkretep

Thanks, Juan. Good point about the nasals. I haven't heard some of your options before:



_leaned_ pronounced /li:nt/
_lended_ as past tense or past participle of _lend_
_drug_ as past tense or past participle of _drag_
From your profile, I gather you are an American of Mexican extraction. Would these be common choices where you are?

In the EO thread, there was also some discussion of the possibility of _broadcasted_ as past participle of _broadcast_, and there's also this ambiguity in relation to words ending with dental plosives: _quit _or _quitted_, _shitted_ or _shit_ or _shat_?


----------



## JuanEscritor

natkretep said:


> Thanks, Juan. Good point about the nasals. I haven't heard some of your options before:
> 
> 
> 
> _leaned_ pronounced /li:nt/
> _lended_ as past tense or past participle of _lend_
> _drug_ as past tense or past participle of _drag_
> From your profile, I gather you are an American of Mexican extraction. Would these be common choices where you are?



Actually, I am (almost) entirely of northern European decent; about a 3rd or 4th generation American; I just like Spanish.  I might want to fix my profile to prevent confusion... 

I'm from and in Minnesota.  The only one of those that I can say is common for sure is _drug_.  However, I can hear voiceless _leaned_ in my head, and it sounds very natural (_He leaned /li:nt/ up against the tree..._),* but not so overwhelmingly 'correct' that I'd find the voiced version odd, or even be aware that I may have heard it from someone else—i.e., notice it as something different.  As for _lended_, I am a little uncertain; it's not a word I hear very often, in either form, and so it is hard to say which is more common.  I'm hesitant to say it is a personal idiosyncrasy, though, like my splitting of 'behave'.



> In the EO thread, there was also some discussion of the possibility of _broadcasted_ as past participle of _broadcast_, and there's also this ambiguity in relation to words ending with dental plosives: _quit _or _quitted_, _shitted_ or _shit_ or _shat_?


Indeed!  I don't use the word _broadcast_ in the active voice enough to know my preference there, but I can definitely say it is: _quit, quit_;_ shit, shat_.

JE
__________
* In my own speech, the /i/ would not be lengthened, just nasalized and the /n/ dropped.


----------



## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> For the following, there are no alternatives for me:
> 
> _get, got, gotten
> ..._


There is one minor variant:
_get, got, got_


----------



## clevermizo

sandpiperlily said:


> Interesting.  I would say that "knelt" and "dreamt" are in fairly common use in American English (at least among some groups), although "learnt" and "leant" are not.



I think I might actually use dreamed/dreamt ([dri:md], [drεmt]) in more or less free variation.  Or I might say "I had a dream" and avoid the entire issue.


----------



## Alxmrphi

berndf said:


> There is one minor variant:
> _get, got, got_



_Minor?
_
This is one of the flagship first ports of call to search through to check a US/UK form of English! 
I remember listening to an audio lecture and it was discussing how colloquial GA and BE differed, and at one point the linguist had some writing in front of him that wasn't marked (to say which was which), and mistakenly said the UK one was the US one, and as he read it he said "...I'd got..." and immediately froze and corrected himself because he knew instantly periphrastic _have_ + _got_ = British.


----------



## berndf

Alxmrphi said:


> _Minor?_


_Minor_ in the context of this discussion because those are variations of the strong conjugation and not a strong vs. weak opposition.


----------



## JuanEscritor

berndf said:


> There is one minor variant:
> _get, got, got_



I spoke too soon!  Yes, even for me, this alternative _can_ be used, but only in a narrow sense, when the phrase _have got_ simply means _have_.

_I've gotten twelve letters in the mail so far from the credit company..._
_I've got twelve letters here from the credit company..._*

JE
__________
* (EDIT) I think this would be seen as a 'formalized' variant of colloquial _got_ (=_have_); the issue is that going from _I got..._ to _I've got..._ (inserting _have_) seems to leave the original verb form unaltered.  Thus, I think _I've got_ in AE is an oddity caught halfway between colloquial and formal; at the far colloquial  end of the spectrum, you'd never find _have got_ in any situation in AE, just _have gotten_ or simple _got_.


----------



## berndf

JuanEscritor said:


> _I've gotten twelve letters in the mail so far from the credit company..._
> _I've got twelve letters here from the credit company..._*


Yes, this is a semantic distinction which is consistently applied in AE and simply not available in BE where you would use _got_ in both sentences.


JuanEscritor said:


> I think this would be seen as a 'formalized' variant of colloquial _got_ (=_have_); the issue is that going from _I got..._ to _I've got..._ (inserting _have_) seems to leave the original verb form unaltered.  Thus, I think _I've got_ in AE is an oddity caught halfway between colloquial and formal; at the far colloquial  end of the spectrum, you'd never find _have got_ in any situation in AE, just _have gotten_ or simple _got_.


19th century AE usage was like BE: pt: _got_ with _gat_ as an archaic variant; pp:_ got_ with _gotten_ as a less common variant. My guess is that the variant _gotten_ which was already at the verge of extinction (the 1913 edition of Webster's described _gotten_ as _obsolescent_) was resurrected in AE to disambiguate between the two meanings (_I've got=I possess; I've gotten=I have received_).


----------



## Alxmrphi

berndf said:


> Yes, this is a semantic distinction which is consistently applied in AE and simply not available in BE where you would use _got_ in both sentences.



We'd make the distinction with the use (or non-use) of_ have_.

_I got twelve letters from the credit card company.
I've got twelve letters from the credit card company_.


----------



## berndf

Alxmrphi said:


> We'd make the distinction with the use (or non-use) of_ have_.
> 
> _I got twelve letters from the credit card company.
> I've got twelve letters from the credit card company_.


Yes, but at the expense of loosing the distinction between past tense and present perfect, i.e. the difference between
_I received twelve letters from the credit card company.
__I have received twelve letters from the credit card company.
_cannot be expressed with the verb _to get_. In AE you have
_I got twelve letters from the credit card company.
__I have gotten twelve letters from the credit card company.
_and you have
_I have got twelve letters from the credit card company.
_


----------



## Alxmrphi

> Yes, but at the expense of loosing the distinction between past tense and present perfect,



Oh yeah, that's true.

I thought you meant we were unable to distinguish past tense from possession, not from preterite to past participle. Now I get what you mean


----------



## natkretep

Alxmrphi said:


> Oh yeah, that's true.
> 
> I thought you meant we were unable to distinguish past tense from possession, not from preterite to past participle. Now I get what you mean



I had a discussion with someone about the potential ambiguity of _have got _to mean (1) possess, (2) obtain, and he insisted that he would never use it to mean sense 2, but would always relexicalise (eg say 'I managed to get ...').

Example:
1. I've got a car. [= I have a car]
2. I've got a car. [= I managed to get a car.]


----------



## JuanEscritor

Alxmrphi said:


> We'd make the distinction with the use (or non-use) of_ have_.
> 
> _I got twelve letters from the credit card company.
> I've got twelve letters from the credit card company_.



In AE, though, the first could be 'formalized' to _I've got_, and still have the same meaning.

Question: Does the _I got_ in your first example carry any weight of informality in BE like it does in AE?

JE


----------



## Alxmrphi

JuanEscritor said:


> In AE, though, the first could be 'formalized' to _I've got_, and still have the same meaning.
> 
> Question: Does the _I got_ in your first example carry any weight of informality in BE like it does in AE?
> 
> JE



Well in a more formal sense the word_ got_ probably wouldn't be used (another word like_ received_ is more probable). Within the sense that got is used, I wouldn't say it's more informal than with _have_.

However, issues of formality are massively subjective within a speech community so disagreements are a given.


----------



## sandpiperlily

I consider "I've got" to be informal, while "I have" is neutral.

At least in the US, I interpret "I've got" to mean "I have," rather than "I have obtained / received."

"I've got curly hair." 
"I've got four tickets to the game tonight." 
"I've got to put on my shoes before we go outside."


----------



## ewie

To Mr.Mrphi: Do you hear _tret_ in your bit of the world, Alx?  It's always struck me as a bit of an oddity, coming as it does from a non-Anglo-Saxon verb.  (But then I suppose it makes perfect sense by analogy with _eat_.)


----------



## Alxmrphi

ewie said:


> To Mr.Mrphi: Do you hear _tret_ in your bit of the world, Alx?  It's always struck me as a bit of an oddity, coming as it does from a non-Anglo-Saxon verb.  (But then I suppose it makes perfect sense by analogy with _eat_.)



I've not heard _tret_ as p.p of _treat_ before, but it's quite a nice word 
I do fail to understand how people associate new forms with lack of education, so it's a shame people don't use it more often (just read the other thread).

In that thread you said you were quite familiar with it? I didn't get the impression you thought it was an oddity. I know a guy from Rotheram and I've not heard him say the p.p of that verb but I can bet it would be _tret_! I'll ask him next time I see him.


----------



## Hulalessar

ewie said:


> To Mr.Mrphi: Do you hear _tret_ in your bit of the world, Alx?  It's always struck me as a bit of an oddity, coming as it does from a non-Anglo-Saxon verb.  (But then I suppose it makes perfect sense by analogy with _eat_.)



You certainly hear it in Lincolnshire, where you also hear "clen" for "cleaned".


----------



## Elle Paris

Hulalessar said:


> You certainly hear it in Lincolnshire, where you also hear "clen" for "cleaned".


 
How interesting! Is there no list of all these variations and ALL the irregular verbs along with etymology and locations where which is used etc.?
I have a lot of lists but none are complete!


----------



## ewie

Alxmrphi said:


> In that thread you said you were quite familiar with it? I didn't get the impression you thought it was an oddity.


Yes, I'm very familiar with it, Alx.  (I should maybe have said _anomaly_ rather than _oddity_)


Hulalessar said:


> You certainly hear it in Lincolnshire, where you also hear "clen" for "cleaned".


Wow! I have never heard or read that one, Hula


Elle Paris said:


> Is there no list of all these variations and ALL the irregular verbs along with etymology and locations where which is used etc.?


Maybe you're looking at it, Elle


----------



## Istriano

I don't know. In American English people use

*snuck *(irregular) rather than *sneaked *(regular), and
*dove *(irregular) rather than *dived *(regular)

On the other hand, *learned, dreamed *and so on (regular)
are more common than _learnt, dreamt_ (which my US spelling checker considers plain wrong and underlines them in red.  )


----------



## Meyer Wolfsheim

If I am understanding the OP correctly, the article claims "irregular" English verbs are those which no longer follow a productive paradigm (that is the group is closed more or less for membership) and regular verbs are considered those taking the dental stop suffix -ed/-d (where voicing values are predictable as well as adding a vowel between the dental and verb in question).  

However as mentioned over and over again in the posts, there have been and still are cases where new members of these "irregular" verbs have been produced, by analogy of some sort.  

But based on what I have read and discussed with my professors (we very recently talked about this "ablaut" in English), these so called "irregular" verbs are not irregular at all, but as everyone here has already heard they are so called "strong verbs" with vowel alternations/adding nasal /n/ or some allophone of it to form the simple past/past participle forms.  

I believe that a native English speaker, in the language area, treats true irregular verbs like "be" different from say "drive."  There is a pattern and more or less regular way to conjugate non-weak verbs; an English speaker will say it sounds "better" or "correct."  The problem is the rules behind it are not immediately obvious to anyone let alone a native.  To a foreign language learner it may appear completely irregular but there is much systimaticity (if spelled correctly) to it underlyingly.  

Of course what I have just said has been said a million times over but it should be re-taken into account before verbs like "drive" or "sing" are called irregular, as that is not the case, they simply belong to a different verb conjugation group.  

But it makes sense that strong verbs are a closed class as almost (or maybe all?) are monosyllabic words and the system seems to have much difficulty in dealing with polysyllabic words (are there true polysyllabic strong verbs?) like those from French/Latin as the phonological rules cannot be applied unless analogy exists and even then it is not always applied.  The question to answer may be what was the driving force behind English (and even other Germanic languages like German) to favor an "analytical" suffixation to take over or at least be somewhat rampant.


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## Dan2

Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> But based on what I have read and discussed with my professors (we very recently talked about this "ablaut" in English), these so called "irregular" verbs are not irregular at all, but as everyone here has already heard they are so called "strong verbs" with vowel alternations/adding nasal /n/ or some allophone of it to form the simple past/past participle forms.
> 
> I believe that a native English speaker, in the language area, treats true irregular verbs like "be" different from say "drive."  There is a pattern and more or less regular way to conjugate non-weak verbs;


I agree with a lot in the full post.  W/r/t what I quoted, I would just point out that while it's true that the strong verbs typically involve a simple vowel alternation in going from present to past, the _form _of the alternation is largely unpredictable, thus requiring memorization and justifying calling these verbs irregular.  Altho some alternations are more common than others, almost any pattern can be found among everyday verbs.  Examples (I hope my "ASCII IPA" symbols are obvious):

aI -> aU: find/found
aI -> u: fly/flew
aI -> o: drive/drove
aI -> c: fight/fought
aI -> e: lie/lay
aI -> I: bite/bit
aI -> v: strike/struck
i -> i: beat/beat
i -> e: eat/ate (US)
i > o: speak/spoke
i -> c: see/saw
i -> E: meet/met
i -> v: sneak/snuck (informal)
e -> o: break/broke
e -> U: take/took
u -> a: shoot/shot
u -> I: do/did (+d)
o -> E: hold/held
o -> u: grow/grew
c -> u: draw/drew
c -> c: cost/cost
c -> E: fall/fell
I -> c: bring/brought (+ ng->t)
I -> e: give/gave
I -> I: hit/hit
I -> ae: sing/sang
I -> v: dig/dug
E -> E: bet/bet
E -> a: get/got
ae -> c: catch/caught (+ ch->t)
ae -> U stand/stood (+ delete n)
ae -> ae cast/cast
v -> e: come/came
v -> ae: run/ran
v -> v: cut/cut
U -> U: put/put


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## JulianStuart

The original post in this thread cited work that was originally published in Nature.  The whole paper can now be found at this link.  

Dan - pretty impressive list of the changes of


> the _form _of the alternation is largely unpredictable, thus requiring memorization and justifying calling these verbs irregular


  Or at least "simple" and "complicated" 

The authors seem to agree with you, as they define - for the purposes of their analysis - what _they_ mean by irregular (and they put the word in  quotes to acknowledge that might mean something slightly different in other vocabularies) From the body of the paper 


> The modern _-ed_ rule descends from Old English ‘weak’ conjugation, which applied to 3/4 of all Old English verbs.  The exceptions - ancestors of the modern irregulars - were mostly  members of the so-called ‘strong’ verbs. There are 7 different classes  of strong verbs with exemplars among the modern English irregulars, each  with distinguishing markers that often include characteristic vowel  shifts. ...  We therefore define regularity with respect to the modern _-ed_ rule, and call all these exceptional forms ‘irregular’.


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## SkyScout

In the US one simplification has been the use of the verb form: "DOES" for all present tense cases:

I does
You does
He does
We does
You does
They does

the source of which IMHO is prolly from the Ebonic, especially since Ebonic has become the "oh-so-cool" form of street speech among the uneducated.
I am a lawyer - in my early 30's as of this writing.
I sadly read legal briefs and pleadings from attorneys in their 20's who, notwithstanding undergraduate and law school, use the incorrect "does" form in their writings.   A LOT!

So, "Yes" - American English is simplifying in this one form.
Scary.
What will it be like in 500 years!?
(ah, that's right, no one will be here in 500 years - we're all either terminating on December 21, 2012 or will have previously been raptured into a heavenly oasis with one of the Trinity gods. Ugh).


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## Frank06

SkyScout said:


> In the US one simplification has been the use of the verb form: "DOES" for all present tense cases:
> So, "Yes" - American English is simplifying in this one form.
> Scary.
> What will it be like in 500 years!?


SkyScout, compared to the English of 500 years ago, your variant is a scary, simplified one. Somebody who'd call himself educated 500 years ago, would probably consider your English as the result of an utter lack of education.

Besides, the idea that every language variant which differ from the standard/personal one is a sign of being uneducated, that idea is quite obsolete. And imo, in itself it's a sign of being uneducated (at least what linguistics is concerned).

F


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## Alxmrphi

> Besides, the idea that every language variant which differ from the  standard/personal one is a sign of being uneducated, that idea is quite  obsolete. And imo, in itself it's a sign of being uneducated (at least  what linguistics is concerned).


Exactly!
In my own experiences in linguistic discussions with the people around me this is well known and taken as standard, but here on WR I feel like I am always fighting this battle. It's happened a few times even over the last few days, the snobbery that exists about different language use is just rife with some people on here. You're completely correct, this whole idea that language that is not the same as the version person A was used to when growing up, is therefore a result of a lack of education, is just counter-intuitive to me, as a(n amateur) linguist.

My favourite relevant quote about dialect uses is from a book published back in 1911*, which is light-years ahead of its time in modern thought, considering this view was printed over 100 years ago:



> When we talk of "speakers of a dialect," we imply that they employ a  provincial method of speech to which the man who has been educated to  use the language of books is unaccustomed. Such a man find that the  dialect-speaker frequently uses words or modes of expression which he  does not understand or which are at any rate strange to him; and he is  sure to notice that such words as seem to be familiar to him are, for  the most part, strangely pronounced. [..]
> The speaker of the "standard" language is frequently  tempted to consider himself as the dialect-speaker's superiour, unless  he has already acquired some _elementary knowledge_ of the value of the  science of language _or has sufficient common sense to be desirous of  learning to understand that which for the moment lies beyond him_"


(English dialects from the 8th Century to today - C.F. Clay).


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## SkyScout

Frank06 said:


> SkyScout...Somebody who'd call himself educated 500 years ago, would probably consider your English as the result of an utter lack of education.
> F


Aye, aye & d'accord!
(_I was being facetious_)


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## Benkarnell

Today I noticed myself using the word _dreamed_ instead of _dreamt._  And then there's _spilled_ instead of _spilt._


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## Alxmrphi

Benkarnell said:


> Today I noticed myself using the word _dreamed_ instead of _dreamt._  And then there's _spilled_ instead of _spilt._



What's not normal about those words?
Think how weird it would have been if Susan Boyle got up and sang "I dreamt a dream of time gone by".
Liquid sounds like [l] usually are quite variable, and both those forms, at least from what I know, are perfectly fine.


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## cyberpedant

From the OED2 CD:
dream  v.2 Pa. tense and pple. dreamed, dreamt. Forms: see dream n.2
spill, v. Pa. tense and pple. spilled, spilt.


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## berndf

Alxmrphi said:


> What's not normal about those words?
> Think how weird it would have been if Susan Boyle got up and sang "I dreamt a dream of time gone by".
> Liquid sounds like [l] usually are quite variable, and both those forms, at least from what I know, are perfectly fine.


In addition, this has nothing to do with weak vs. strong but the forms _I dreamed_ and _I dreamt _are simply two different renderings of the Germanic weak preterite suffix. Already in Middle English you find both, _ich dremede _and _ich drempte_ (compare German _ich träumte_ which is also weak). In Middle English the weak preterite suffix existed in the forms _-ed(e), -d(e)_ and _-t(e)_.


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## Alxmrphi

berndf said:


> In addition, this has nothing to do with weak vs. strong but the forms _I dreamed_ and _I dreamt _are simply to different renderings of the Germanic weak preterite suffix. Already in Middle English you find both, _ich demede _and _ich dempte_ (compare German _ich träumte_ which is also weak). In Middle English the weak preterite suffix existed in the forms _-ed(e), -d(e)_ and _-t(e)_.



Those forms occured without an [r] after the [d] in ME? Is that a typo or true?
(*two different)


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## berndf

Alxmrphi said:


> Those forms occured without an [r] after the [d] in ME? I didn't know that!
> (*two different)


Sorry for the typo (which got replicated by copy/paste; you see how lazy I am, using copy/paste for just two words).


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## Alxmrphi

I see! It threw me at first because I couldn't see what happened to those verbs!
Makes me want to open my History of English book a little bit actually


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## Benkarnell

berndf said:


> In addition, this has nothing to do with weak vs. strong but the forms _I dreamed_ and _I dreamt _are simply to different renderings of the Germanic weak preterite suffix. Already in Middle English you find both, _ich dremede _and _ich drempte_ (compare German _ich träumte_ which is also weak). In Middle English the weak preterite suffix existed in the forms _-ed(e), -d(e)_ and _-t(e)_.


 
No, obviously they're not examples of weak-strong verbs, but the /-t-/ forms are quite clearly irregular in another way, simply in that they do not have the /-ed/ ending.  That their endings are etymologically the same as the regular suffix doesn't change the fact that they don't follow the usual pattern.

If irregulars are really becoming "regularized," I would not be surprised if the process were happening more with verbs like this, rather than true strong verbs.


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## Istriano

_sneak, snuck
dive, dove_

 I think, there's a tendency of making the verbs more irregular, in the US English
In the Midwestern US English, many  (other) regular verbs get ''irregularized''  in the informal style.


_Should_ Old Acquaintance be *forgot *, and never thought upon...



> *for·get **/*fɚˈgɛt/  verb
> for·gets*;* for·got /-ˈgɑ*:*t/* for·got·ten /-ˈgɑ:tn̩/ or for·got*


http://www.learnersdictionary.com/search/forget

So, we have:

*get, got, gotten/got
forget, forgot, forgotten/forgot*


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## Alxmrphi

> In the Midwestern US English, many  (other) regular verbs get ''irregularized''  in the informal style.


I think it's worth pointing out that using terms like "irregular" and "regular" are a bit, what's the word, counter-intuitive due to the nature of making it seem like making a verb_ irregular _is something more strange than regular. When there's a well known verb with a well known pattern that another verb imitates, whether it be irregular in pattern or not, is an extremely likely thing to happen. It's happened probably hundreds of times in the last few hundred years and lots of earlier 'favourites' exist around the world today, particularly in England. We have things like dialect '_brung_' (which I've heard not infrequently in the usual normal contexts) which obviously patterns with 'spring/sprung / fling/flung' etc. So as long as there's a good visualised inter-verbal connection, then reanalysis of a particular form to an irregular system can be a much more likely possibility than moving to the standard weak /ed/ paradigm.

So movement to irregularity isn't always as odd as the term 'irregularity' can often imply 
I personally like the ablaut shifts in English verbs, changing vowels rather than adding endings, I hope more verbs shift over in the future!


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## bgoldnyxnet

sandpiperlily said:


> Very interesting; I had never heard this distinction.  Thanks for enlightening us!
> 
> I still don't see how truly crazy verbs, like "to be" and "to go" fit into this pattern, however.



They don't. The forms of "to be" and "to go" are probably agglomerations of two or more verbs -- at least, according to one linguistic theory.

They're that way in German and Anglo-Saxon, too.

be: I am, (thou art), he is, we/you/they are
sein: ich bin, du bist, er ist, wir sind, ihr seid, Sie sind
past: English was, (thou wast), were, German war
past participle: English been, German gewesen

I go, (thou goest), he goes, we/you/they go
ich gehe, du gehst, er geht, wir/ihr/Sie gehen, 
past: English went, German ging
past participle: English gone, German gegangen

Various bits and pieces of this hang around in dialects. The Scottish "gang" for "went" is an example. Also, the German convention that the verbs of motion form the perfect with sein(*) instead of haben is still seen in the usage "he's gone" as an alternate for "he has gone".

(*) Ich habe brot gemacht vs. Ich bin zu Berlin gegangen
I have made bread... I (am) gone to Berlin
i

ich gehe, du gehst, er geht, wir/ihr/sie gehen


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## JulianStuart

Benkarnell said:


> *If *irregulars are really becoming "regularized," I would not be surprised if the process were happening more with verbs like this, rather than true strong verbs.



The study cited in the original post for this thread simply divided verbs into those to which you add -ed to make the past form (_what they called "regular" for the purposes of discussion in their study_), and all the rest to which you do something other than that ("irregular").  Once that division was made, the results simply fall out of their analysis of the database created by Google's "book-digitizing" efforts, and there is no doubt that the less frequently used "irregular" verbs become "regular" at a far faster rate than those "irregular" verbs that are frequently used.  The latter are in no danger at all.  The irregular verbs affected do not "disappear", their _irregularity_ disappears.


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## berndf

Alxmrphi said:


> We have things like dialect '_brung_' (which I've heard not infrequently in the usual normal contexts) which obviously patterns with 'spring/sprung / fling/flung' etc.


Evidence of a strong conjugation following the pattern sing/sang/sung can be found in both, OE and OHG, i.e. this variant is obviously common West-Germanic. So, the modern occurrences might not be an innovation but an old form that survived in some dialects.


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## berndf

JulianStuart said:


> The study cited in the original post for this thread simply divided verbs into those to which you add -ed to make the past form (_what they called "regular" for the purposes of discussion in their study_), and all the rest to which you do something other than that ("irregular").  Once that division was made, the results simply fall out of their analysis of the database created by Google's "book-digitizing" efforts, and there is no doubt that the less frequently used "irregular" verbs become "regular" at a far faster rate than those "irregular" verbs that are frequently used.  The latter are in no danger at all.  The irregular verbs affected do not "disappear", their _irregularity_ disappears.


See also this discussion.


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## koniecswiata

One theory has it that we have two systems vying for each other in Germanic languages.  One, which we tend to refer to as "irregular" (strong) is basically based on ablaut:  to make the tense change, you change a vowel within the verb:  speak / spoke or get / got are good examples.  This system seems to be the older or original one.  At some point (perhaps around 2,000 years age), and research into Gothic seems to show this, the weak/defective (now usually called regular) verbs got a new system for expressing the past.  This was basically a system of analogy.  The strong verb do / did was added to the end of the "defective" verb.  For example: help in the past was something like "help-did" (of course I'm substituting the modern verb "help" here to make the point).  Then, phonetic assimilation occurred:  helpdid became helped (pronounced helpt).  Since its inception, this more regular system--at least to us in 2011--has been slowly but steadily spreading.  Now, it is the more productive system and any new verbs not based on a pre-existing strong verb, adhere to this system--which we think of as regular.


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## Those Who Squirm

With strong verbs still in common use, like _run_, _shrink_,and _stink_, what I see more than anything is merging of umlaut preterit and past perfect forms.  So _has run _is in the process of becoming replaced by _has ran_, though to me it is still like nails on the chalkboard when an educated person says this.   Similarly the preterits _shrank _and _stank, _seem to be on the way out in favor of _shrunk _and _stunk.   _Somehow that sort of change doesn't seem so grating to me, though I think _stank, _in the simple past tense, has an overwhelmingly awful grandeur that seems to aptly connote the perception of a horrible stench.  "It stunk" just sounds too colloquial and metaphoric, like what you'd say of a recording or TV episode.


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## Milktoast50

Hello,

Elle Paris already asked I think, but does anyone know of any really good resources dealing with strong verbs?  I'm thinking a book probably with historical examples, listing all the Old English ones, occurences in M.E. and since, maybe references to other West-German languages, and analysis on when and in what way different classes split.

Thanks guys


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## Brioche

bgoldnyxnet said:


> Various bits and pieces of this hang around in dialects. The Scottish "gang" for "went" is an example. Also, the German convention that the verbs of motion form the perfect with sein(*) instead of haben is still seen in the usage "he's gone" as an alternate for "he has gone".
> 
> (*) Ich habe brot gemacht vs. Ich bin zu Berlin gegangen
> I have made bread... I (am) gone to Berlin
> i
> 
> ich gehe, du gehst, er geht, wir/ihr/sie gehen



In Early Modern English the verb _to be_ was used to form the perfect tense of verbs of motion.
There are examples in Shakespeare, plenty in 18th century writing, and in some authors of the 19th century.


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