In an awesome paper [1] published in 2007, it was shown that irregular English verbs have been dying out (i.e., "regularized") at an incredibly precise and measurable rate. The paper shows "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."
I recently felt that effect in an old norse class here in Germany.
I had to translate brast into German.
Bresta follows the 3rd class of strong verbs (old norse still has more or less rules for the strong verbs):
bresta, brast, (brustum,) brostit - to burst, bursted, burst (archaic: to burst, brast, bursten)
The same verb also exists in German:
bersten, barst, geborsten
However it's not that common today and the past tense is also extremely uncommon in speach. This led me inflect it weak (regular).
As Steven Pinker points out in this very interesting article, the category of irregular verbs in English will surely shrink over time, as old, little used verbs become regularized over time, but new verbs formed in English are never formed as irregular verbs. For all that, though, "many of the irregulars can sleep securely, for they have two things on their side. One is their sheer frequency in the language. The ten commonest verbs in English (be, have, do, say, make, go, take, come, see, and get) are all irregular, and about 70% of the time we use a verb, it is an irregular verb. And children have a wondrous capacity for memorizing words; they pick up a new one every two hours, accumulating 60,000 by high school. Eighty irregulars are common enough that children use them before they learn to read, and I predict they will stay in the language indefinitely." Cool.
> the category of irregular verbs in English will surely shrink over time
I just don't think that's true.
English, like all other languages, is in an unbroken line of continuous speech from the first group of humans to use speech at all. (Or if you don't follow the theory of a single origin of language, an origin set of language users.) Where you place the borders between what you call "English" or "Middle English" or "unnamed branch of Old High Saxon spoken by a particularly small group of villages" is fuzzy, but nobody ever decided "What I was speaking 10 minutes ago was Language A but starting now this is called Language B and they're totally different in every way".
So we've been developing English for a very long time. If "little used verbs become regularized over time, but new verbs formed [are] never formed as irregular verbs", then why do we have still have irregular verbs at all? Why wouldn't they have been wiped out thousands of years ago?
In the most obvious cases, English hasn't changed at a uniform rate. It's experienced gradual splits, mergings, conquerings, being alternatingly a vulgar and prestige dialect, immigration, emmigration, wars, trade explosions, and regular old influence of other languages nearby.
The claim you're quoting seems to be that if a language is left to its own devices that it will gradually approach regularity. I definitely disagree that point, and there are somewhat well-understood methods for these changes it occur even in an isolated language (for instance, vowel shifts that affect some words more than others, after which words that used to follow the same rule no longer do). But let's set that aside. Even if we ignore the normal linguistic processes that can increase irregularity in an isolated language, what makes us think that the "artificial" events like wars or interactions with other languages will decrease? Why would those things stop?
> As Steven Pinker points out in this very interesting article, the category of irregular verbs in English will surely shrink over time, as old, little used verbs become regularized over time, but new verbs formed in English are never formed as irregular verbs.
At least, until we start pronouncing "plated", "played", and "placed" so differently that kids wonder why they're all spelled the same :)
Choosing between more/er and most/est has always seemed quite random to me for two syllable adjectives. The problem with English is that there ALWAYS seems to be an exception to the rule.
If I may take this unique opportunity, does anybody know of a command line tool (say "past") such as wn [1] that could output something like the following?
$ past go
go went gone
I'm talking about a stand-alone program that would work offline. Thanks!
Your comment seems irrelevant - the article never claimed that english has the most (or even a lot of) irregular verbs. If you have some linguistic insights regarding irregular verbs in Polish I would be curious to hear them (I really mean it)
> Not only is the irregular class losing members by emigration, it is not gaining new ones by immigration. When new verbs enter English via onomatopoeia (to ding, to ping), borrowings from other languages (deride and succumb from Latin), and conversions from nouns (fly out), the regular rule has first dibs on them. The language ends up with dinged, pinged, derided, succumbed, and flied out, not dang, pang, derode, succame, or flew out.
I'd love a quick straw poll. Who says flied out?
I've only ever heard flew out - I've never heard anyone say "I flied out yesterday."
The real question is how rule based natural language systems can evolve. Otherwise they are subject to becoming moribund.
Of course that's not simply learning the latest usages on the cutting edge of human language evolution. Rather, natural language AI evolves concurrently with the technology people use to communicate, which technology (heavily?) influences their language use.
I'd go so far as to suggest the influence of technology on language is more important than historical rules of verbiage and exceptions.
Long live the irregulars! Having said that, I would surmise that the past tense of a hockey stick is a tree. I just couldn't say which kind, I'm not an expert.
The thing with the most commonest verbs "come" and "go" is they're the same verb but with different directionalities, just as "come" and "came" is the same but with different tenses. Ditto "bring" and "take". So the form irregularity sits not only on the tense but also the direction of movement.
i've had a pet theory that irregularity helps memorization. the thought is that when something is deducible rather than arbitrary, you remember the rule, not the result of the rule. when its arbitrary, you just remember it. does anyone know of anything to suggest this is true or false?
Only barely related, but I do know that the speed limit in the parking lot at my local mall is 18 MPH. Not 15 or 20, but 18. And of course the only reason I know that is because they choosed an arbitrary value and not a standard "slow parking lot" value.
The fact that the 10 commonest verbs are all irregular seems to agree with your theory,
What's to say that "payed" won't end up winning in the end? I mean, it's a hell of a lot more logical, pay->payed, than pay->paid.
The really amusing part about loose vs. lose is that both have a negative connotation, so the similarity in sense lends a dissonance to the "attuned eye" not unlike two musical notes slightly off pitch played interchangeably.
If you want to control language evolution, perhaps you'd prefer the existence of something like the Académie Française and invented words like "courriel"?
[+] [-] xefer|11 years ago|reply
[1] "Quantifying the evolutionary dynamics of language" by Erez Lieberman, Jean-Baptiste Michel, [...], and Martin A. Nowak http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2460562/
[+] [-] legulere|11 years ago|reply
I had to translate brast into German. Bresta follows the 3rd class of strong verbs (old norse still has more or less rules for the strong verbs): bresta, brast, (brustum,) brostit - to burst, bursted, burst (archaic: to burst, brast, bursten)
The same verb also exists in German: bersten, barst, geborsten
However it's not that common today and the past tense is also extremely uncommon in speach. This led me inflect it weak (regular).
[+] [-] tokenadult|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ketralnis|11 years ago|reply
I just don't think that's true.
English, like all other languages, is in an unbroken line of continuous speech from the first group of humans to use speech at all. (Or if you don't follow the theory of a single origin of language, an origin set of language users.) Where you place the borders between what you call "English" or "Middle English" or "unnamed branch of Old High Saxon spoken by a particularly small group of villages" is fuzzy, but nobody ever decided "What I was speaking 10 minutes ago was Language A but starting now this is called Language B and they're totally different in every way".
So we've been developing English for a very long time. If "little used verbs become regularized over time, but new verbs formed [are] never formed as irregular verbs", then why do we have still have irregular verbs at all? Why wouldn't they have been wiped out thousands of years ago?
In the most obvious cases, English hasn't changed at a uniform rate. It's experienced gradual splits, mergings, conquerings, being alternatingly a vulgar and prestige dialect, immigration, emmigration, wars, trade explosions, and regular old influence of other languages nearby.
The claim you're quoting seems to be that if a language is left to its own devices that it will gradually approach regularity. I definitely disagree that point, and there are somewhat well-understood methods for these changes it occur even in an isolated language (for instance, vowel shifts that affect some words more than others, after which words that used to follow the same rule no longer do). But let's set that aside. Even if we ignore the normal linguistic processes that can increase irregularity in an isolated language, what makes us think that the "artificial" events like wars or interactions with other languages will decrease? Why would those things stop?
[+] [-] Cushman|11 years ago|reply
At least, until we start pronouncing "plated", "played", and "placed" so differently that kids wonder why they're all spelled the same :)
[+] [-] lkbm|11 years ago|reply
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/twote#English
Granted, it's definitely not winning out over "tweeted".
[+] [-] ademarre|11 years ago|reply
Until reading that, and subsequently confirming accepted usage, I never would have used commonest as the superlative of common.
[+] [-] dtech|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhrgunatha|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheSpiceIsLife|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ezequiel-garzon|11 years ago|reply
[1] https://wordnet.princeton.edu/wordnet/man/wn.1WN.html
[+] [-] acqq|11 years ago|reply
Tokenadult lists them all here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8738342
[+] [-] rmc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ScottBurson|11 years ago|reply
Actually it was spelled "scrod". I used to have one of those T-shirts. I believe the full legend was "I got scrod last night at Legal Seafood".
Ref.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrod
[+] [-] kornakiewicz|11 years ago|reply
Few forms of simple "to be": jestem, byłem, będę, jesteś, byłeś, będziesz, jest, był, była, było, będzie, jesteśmy, byliśmy, będziemy, jesteście, byliście, będziecie, są, byli, były, będą.
good luck ;)
[+] [-] felxh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhrgunatha|11 years ago|reply
I'd love a quick straw poll. Who says flied out?
I've only ever heard flew out - I've never heard anyone say "I flied out yesterday."
[+] [-] sparky_z|11 years ago|reply
"In baseball, one says that a slugger has flied out; no mere mortal has ever "flown out" to center field."
[+] [-] akavi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vorg|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Cushman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] GFK_of_xmaspast|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jschwartzi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] polynomial|11 years ago|reply
Of course that's not simply learning the latest usages on the cutting edge of human language evolution. Rather, natural language AI evolves concurrently with the technology people use to communicate, which technology (heavily?) influences their language use.
I'd go so far as to suggest the influence of technology on language is more important than historical rules of verbiage and exceptions.
[+] [-] tempodox|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vorg|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgalt212|11 years ago|reply
http://www.amazon.com/501-French-Verbs-Barrons-Language/dp/0...
[+] [-] lfender6445|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajuc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RyanMcGreal|11 years ago|reply
What a same. I quite like the sound of "glew". It glew with the light of a thousands suns.
[+] [-] the_cat_kittles|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] function_seven|11 years ago|reply
The fact that the 10 commonest verbs are all irregular seems to agree with your theory,
[+] [-] trevelyan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r00fus|11 years ago|reply
The really amusing part about loose vs. lose is that both have a negative connotation, so the similarity in sense lends a dissonance to the "attuned eye" not unlike two musical notes slightly off pitch played interchangeably.
If you want to control language evolution, perhaps you'd prefer the existence of something like the Académie Française and invented words like "courriel"?
[+] [-] return0|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Someone|11 years ago|reply