
The Irregular Verbs (2000) - ggreer
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2000_03_landfall.html
======
xefer
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."

[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/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2460562/)

~~~
legulere
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).

~~~
peterfirefly
It is still there in Danish:

[http://ordnet.dk/ods/ordbog?query=briste&search=S%C3%B8g](http://ordnet.dk/ods/ordbog?query=briste&search=S%C3%B8g)

"bristede" is the common past tense but "brast" is still used occasionally.

~~~
Rondom
It is indeed always interesting to see that it is not only the common words
but also those little subleties, which are not noticable at the first glance,
have survived in the different languages.

[http://tyda.se/search/brista?lang[0]=en&lang[1]=de&lang[2]=s...](http://tyda.se/search/brista?lang\[0\]=en&lang\[1\]=de&lang\[2\]=sv)

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tokenadult
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.

~~~
ketralnis
> 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?

~~~
bdr
Presumably, new irregular verbs used to appear, but no longer do. Groups of
speakers are less isolated, we have a standardized written language, and
demarcations between languages are clearer.

~~~
ketralnis
> Presumably, new irregular verbs used to appear, but no longer do

Why not? Have now we invented all of the words we need, but hadn't yet
invented "seen" or "got" in 1200 AD? Then why would it stop now, instead of in
1200 AD?

> we have a standardized written language

But we've had written language for much longer than English has been around

~~~
taejo
At one time, the "irregular" verbs were regular: English (or rather Proto-
Germanic, the common ancestor language of English, German, Swedish, etc.) had
two classes of regular verbs, strong and weak, and newly invented verbs could
be added to either class. However, the strong class over time became somewhat
obsolete and irregular, and is now relatively closed to adding new members
(though not completely: sneak/snuck, dive/dove and shit/shat are relatively
new additions -- certainly long post-dating the irregularization).

------
ademarre
> _The ten commonest verbs in English..._

Until reading that, and subsequently confirming accepted usage, I never would
have used _commonest_ as the superlative of _common_.

~~~
dtech
That's because most common is the commonest:
[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=most+common%2C...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=most+common%2Ccommonest&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmost%20common%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccommonest%3B%2Cc0)

~~~
tlb
Only among commoners.

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ezequiel-garzon
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!

[1]
[https://wordnet.princeton.edu/wordnet/man/wn.1WN.html](https://wordnet.princeton.edu/wordnet/man/wn.1WN.html)

~~~
acqq
There are only 180 itregular verbs, the script would be trivial to make (not
more than 10 minutes in Perl including testing).

Tokenadult lists them all here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8738342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8738342)

------
ScottBurson
> a Boston eatery once sold T-shirts that read "I got schrod at Legal Seafood"

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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrod)

------
kornakiewicz
Try Polish! I would say that every word here is irregular (seven cases and
three tenses).

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
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)

~~~
troAway98765
Your comment seems irrelevant - the grandparent never claimed that polish has
the most (only _many_ ) irregular verbs. If you have some pedantic insights
regarding relevant comments on Hacker News I would be curious to hear them (I
really mean it)

------
bhrgunatha
> 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."

~~~
vorg
Does anyone else say "I've pung that IP address" ?

~~~
defen
Honestly "pang" (past tense) and "pung" (past participle) don't sound terrible
to me, in analogy to sing/ring. Native English speaker from USA, if that
matters.

------
polynomial
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.

------
tempodox
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.

------
vorg
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.

------
jgalt212
Thank God there's only 180 irregular verbs in English. I remember slogging my
way through _501 French Verbs_ in high school to limited success.

[http://www.amazon.com/501-French-Verbs-Barrons-
Language/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/501-French-Verbs-Barrons-
Language/dp/0764179837)

------
lfender6445
I <3 the ending - 'and that is how our youngest irregular, snuck, sneaked in.'

------
ajuc
If you like irregular verbs so much learn a Slavic language :)

------
RyanMcGreal
> In between blow-blew and grow-grew sits glow-glowed.

What a same. I quite like the sound of "glew". _It glew with the light of a
thousands suns._

------
the_cat_kittles
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?

~~~
function_seven
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,

------
trevelyan
I just hope people will eventually stop typing "payed" for paid and "loose"
for lose.

~~~
r00fus
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"?

~~~
krrrh
"Courriel" was actually invented by the Office québécois de la langue
française. But your point stands.

As far as I know the corresponding, and pretty great, word for spam,
"pourriel", came from the streets.

------
return0
At some point "to google" will be so old, it will become irregular too.

~~~
Someone
You mean like _" Yesterday, I giggled"_?

~~~
hessenwolf
Also possibly like geegled, from gögled, or goegled. The old way was for broad
vowels to become slender, for either pluralisation of nouns or for thingumming
of verbs. A, O, and U would be broad vowels, and I and E slender, and the
whole bucket of dipthongs follow somehow.

Or should it be that the whole bucket of dipthongs follows? I, personally,
support metonymic shifts.

~~~
return0
does it have to end in -ed? google/gogle/goglen, a-la "choose". e.g:

 _" Googlicity is defined as the ratio of people who gogle your name in the
last year over the total number of times you have been goglen."_

~~~
taejo
You're right, strong verbs never get -ed at the end.

