Re: (In)transitive verbs

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

> On Fri, Feb 13, 2004 at 04:56:49PM +0100, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > What about my annoying (annoying to me in any case) Tendency of
> > having /i:/>/E/ in preterites. I sometimes have to consciously stop myself
> > from saying "semt", "frekt" for "seemed", "freaked" (as in "he totally
> freaked
> > out when he heard about the eleven-foot pink toy panda"). No doubt they
> slip
> > under the radar way to often ... It very much seems to me my brain has
> > generalized a rule from forms like "dreamt", "kept", and considers the
> regular
> > formation irregular.
>
> Sounds like you've created an extra, special-case rule for verbs which have
> /i:/.  But I don't think that's indicative of what's normal for
> native English speakers. :)
Didn't say it was.

But it would not surprise me to learn that some things are precessed as rule-
governed by some native speakers, and as memorized irregularities by others.
English strong verbs are perhaps too decayed for anyone to process them as
rule-governed (altho the residual regularities must help memorization), but
I'm sure there's better candidates.

Indeed, there might be an abnormal native English speaker out there somewhere
who've generalized the same rule as me re: verbs with /i:/! :)

                                                 Andreas