Re: (In)transitive verbs

Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:

> On Thu, Feb 12, 2004 at 04:53:03PM +0000, Joe wrote:
> > Tristan McLeay wrote:
> > >No. They're all irregular. If a verb doesn't form its past/past
> participle
> > >in -ed, it's irregular. It doesn't matter what the justification of it
> is.
> >
> > I disagree.  If there is a rule(which applies to multiple verbs), it is
> > regular(hence the term).
>
> You don't get to redefine the terms, though, however well-justified your
> interpretation may be according to the terms' etymology. :)
This is an interesting difference 'tween English and German terminology, btw -
the Englishers consider their strong verbs to be irregular, the Germans not.
The chief example of "irregular" verbs in German are weak verbs like
_denken_ "to think" - denken, dachte, gedacht. It's got the regular weak
affixes, but the stem changes are irregular.

I guess you could consider verbs like 'to put' in English as "irregular weak"
ones.

> In English, the "regular" verbs are precisely those which form their
> past and past participle in -ed.  Period.  Not only is this the
> definition used by English grammarians, it is also the way
> English-speakers'  brains work, as evidenced by the fact that the -ed
> rule is applied to neologisms, even when those neologisms phonetically
> resemble verbs which don't follow the pattern.
Usually. You do get patent weirdness like "dove" - used to be "dived".

                                                              Andreas

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