bk@hpfcra.UUCP (05/17/84)
[ ] Have there been any recently invented irregular English verbs? (within the last fifty years or so) Why did irregular verbs come about? Which, if either, of these is closer to the accepted theory: (a) they were the first verbs developed, so people hadn't yet developed the conjugation system, or (b) through frequency of use, shorter forms of the words evolved to save time. Bill Kaiser Andy Goris
george@hp-pcd.UUCP (05/17/84)
Since any noun can be verbed, I think the indiscriminate verbing of nouns should be considered irregular. george at hp-pcd
steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) (05/22/84)
*** Irregular verbs are fossels. They verbs contain the vowel gradations of Proto Indo-European. They are not abbrevations. The only way that a new one could occur is by leveling with an existing paradigm. For instance, "sing" "sang" "sung" "bring" "brought" "brung" Children often make this mistake. English only has two verb tenses, present and past. If a new verb is introduced in English, its past tense is formed by adding either a "t" sound or a "d" sound depending on the the final sound of the verb stem. For instance, "grok" in Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land." The past tense is "groked". The intuition that irregular verbs are commonly used words is correct. That is why they remain irregular. English does not mark the distinction between subject an object on the nouns except in the case of pronouns. We need to say "she" in the subject position and "her" in the object position. "her saw she" is NOT English. In Old English EVERY noun was marked as subject or object. English changed so that this relationship was indicated by word order, but the inflections remained on pronouns for exactly the reason that they are so commonly used. Suppose we say that there are n verbs in English. For each verb we must have a present and a past. In the worst case there is a third ending, the preterate. For instance: "eat" "ate" "eaten" Even in the simpler case of "bring" - "brought", we must have two distinct words stored for each verb. Therefore we must store at least 2*n distinct words. The figure is closer to 3*n. On the other hand, adding a single ending to indicate past or preterate means that we will have exactly n+1 items to store. Though such a blatant analogy to computers might be overkill, many of us who has tried to learn vocabularies of a new language find the idea of a single rule that would cut the number of words we had to memorize in third so appealing that we might be tempted to call it "simpler". No one knows "why" language changes. By whose standards should we judge the "simplicity" of a language. Russian has an incredibly complex inflectional system, basically, their language went the direction of more inflections. There is prefered word order in Russian, but in some cases, any word order will suffice. That means that if you are going to learn Russian you will have to learn many endings that are used in many circumstances. Many English speakers find this difficult. On the other hand a Russian learning English might be frustrated because there is no indication of subject/object relationship on the nouns, no future tense, and so on. The "simplist" language is the one you learned as a child. English is a strange and wonderful language. Surprisingly its syntax is closer to Chinese than it is to its Indo-European relatives. Many of its irregularities are historical records. They mark the history of the people that used the language and the marks are often records of events that happened long before English was a gleam in Proto-Germanic's eye. A good introduction to the history of the English language is Pyles': "The Origns and Development of the English Language." Don Steiny Personetics
jmrobson@watdaisy.UUCP (Mike Robson) (05/22/84)
[Please do not read this line] The question of whether verbs tend over time to become regular or the opposite can presumably be answered by reference to one of the languages for which we have written records going back far enough (e.g. Greek or Latin/Italian). It is apparently a very slow process since the lists of irregular or strong verbs in modern English and German are very similar after rather more than a millenium of separation. I haven't got a German dictionary or grammar handy but after racking my brain a bit the only likely candidate that I can think of is "shit" which is regular in English (in my dictionary at least; I had to look it up because I don't use the past tense very often) but I think "scheissen" is strong. Any German speakers please confirm and comment on status in Old High German or whatever. On further reflection, a more interesting example might be "scribe/schreiben". It seems plausible at least that this word lapsed from being irregular to being regular as a consequence of ceasing to be common enough to be irregular, when it dropped out of being the normal word for "write". Alternatively perhaps the opposite happened in German? It is clear that we need the OED on line to find quick answers to questions like this. Mike Robson (past participle Muck Rebson)
alan@allegra.UUCP (Alan S. Driscoll) (05/23/84)
> ... I haven't got a German > dictionary or grammar handy but after racking my brain a bit the only > likely candidate that I can think of is "shit" which is regular in English > (in my dictionary at least; I had to look it up because I don't use the past > tense very often) but I think "scheissen" is strong. Is "shit" really regular? (Don't even think it...) In the past tense, either "shit" or "shat" sounds ok to me, but "shitted" definately sounds wrong. Of course, you can always punt and say "took a shit." -- Alan S. Driscoll AT&T Bell Laboratories
nather@utastro.UUCP (05/24/84)
[]
As a protest against the verb "output" I have heard the past tense
pronounced as "outpot."
--
Ed Nather
ihnp4!{ut-sally,kpno}!utastro!nather
Astronomy Dept., U. of Texas, Austintrb@masscomp.UUCP (05/25/84)
> ... I haven't got a German > dictionary or grammar handy but after racking my brain a bit the only > likely candidate that I can think of is "shit" which is regular in English > (in my dictionary at least; I had to look it up because I don't use the past > tense very often) but I think "scheissen" is strong. "Shit" might be irregular, but it certainly isn't *new*. My dictionary says it's pre-12th century. I would think any asshole would know that. (It's also the longest one syllable word in the English language.) Andy Tannenbaum Masscomp Inc Westford MA (617) 692-6200 x274
presley@mhuxj.UUCP (Joe Presley) (05/25/84)
> (It's also the longest one syllable word in the English language.)
What about 'crwth'? And 'brougham'? They're both one syllable and longer than
'shit'.
--
Joe Presley (ihnp4!j.presley)marcus@pyuxt.UUCP (M. G. Hand) (05/25/84)
'crwth' can hardly be described as >english language< - it looks
suspiciously like welsh to me (although it might be too pronounceable
to be welsh). Is >brougham< a single syllable word? or simply a poly-
syllabic one ellided to single in its pronounciation? How about
>schist< or >chintz< - there must be several others f a similar character.
marcus hand (pyuxt!marcus)garys@bunker.UUCP (Gary Samuelson) (05/25/84)
Longest one syllyable word in the English language is sh*t??? Not even close. Try 'stretched' for that honor.
grw@fortune.UUCP (Glenn Wichman) (05/26/84)
> "Shit" [...] is also the longest one syllable word in the English language.) > Andy Tannenbaum Masscomp Inc Westford MA (617) 692-6200 x274 Did I misunderstand this? What about "weight"? or "strength"? Certainly longer words! -Glenn
rh@mit-eddie.UUCP (Randy Haskins) (05/26/84)
Add to that list, BLAT (past tense of BLT). Now, BLT isn't really a word, it's a DEC-20 assembler instruction. But, I heard a friend speaking the other day about how he had BLAT a section of memory (it stands for something like BLock Transfer). -- Randwulf (Randy Haskins); Path= genrad!mit-eddie!rh
nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather) (05/27/84)
> (It's also the longest one syllable word in the English language.)
Shee-yit, guys, it isn't one syllable in Texas.
--
Ed Nather
{allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!nather
Astronomy Dept., U. of Texas, Austingurr@west44.UUCP (Dave Gurr) (06/05/84)
< force of habit .. > > From: garys@bunker.UUCP (Gary Samuelson) > > Longest one syllyable word in the English language is sh*t??? > Not even close. Try 'stretched' for that honor. Gary, don't try defining what a syllable is before you can spell it - as it is, you got both the spelling and the example wrong (as a matter of fact, you spelled 'honour' wrong too! :-). Damn' Colonials!!!! :-) mcvax / ukc!root44!west44!gurr / \ vax135 hou3b \ / akgua Dave Gurr, Westfield College, Univ. of London, England.