

Rate of regularizing English verbs - ayberkt
http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2008/11/01/rate-of-regularizing-english-verbs/

======
dalke
"Posted on 1 November 2008" so that should have a date added to the title.

Also, there are words which get irregularized, like "sneak"->"snuck" which was
"introduced in the 19th century as a nonstandard regional variant of sneaked"
(see
[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1931](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1931)).
"Dive"->"dove" is another recent US irregularization (see [http://linguistics-
research-digest.blogspot.com/2013/07/thro...](http://linguistics-research-
digest.blogspot.com/2013/07/throve-and-dove-or-thrived-and-dived.html) ).

Hmm, I recall another verb which dealt with religion (perhaps part of a
religious service?) which was regular, but spelled quite similar to an
irregular verb. Then as it became less common, people started conjugating it
as the similar looking irregular verb.

I just can't remember that word.

~~~
dalke
Ahh, and here's a more recent paper on the topic:
[http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8899722/MichelSci...](http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8899722/MichelScience2011.pdf?sequence=1)
.

It says "each trajectory was sui generis; we observed no characteristic shape"
in how a verb is made regular or irregular. It observes:

> Though irregulars generally yield to regulars, two verbs did the opposite:
> light/lit and wake/woke. Both were irregular in Middle English, were mostly
> regular by 1800, and subsequently backtracked and are irregular again today.
> The fact that these verbs have been going back and forth for nearly 500
> years highlights the gradual nature of the underlying process.

> Still, there was at least one instance of rapid progress by an irregular
> form. Presently, 1% of the English speaking population switches from
> ‘sneaked’ to ‘snuck’ every year...

