Re: (In)transitive verbs

Mark J. Reed wrote:

>On Fri, Feb 13, 2004 at 01:01:39AM +0000, Jack Ketch wrote:
>
>
>>Well, of course! That's what they're taught! - and they could
>>as well be taught that these verbs are "green" and those verbs
>>are "blue" for the sense that makes! That's what I was taught.
>>I wasn't taught the strong/weak distinction until I got into college
>>and began looking at Germanic grammars! The Germanic grammars
>>immediately made sense.
>>
>>
>
>You're missing a fundamental point that both I and John have tried to
>make.  The -ed formation of past indicative and participle in English is
>the regular form not because some prescriptivist authors have labeled it
>such, but because scientific research has determined that it is the
>regular form *for English speakers*.  Not only do most verbs have that
>form (not a requirement for regularity, but a helpful tidbit), but
>application of -ed is the *only* rule that is actually *used* as a rule,
>in real-time by speakers, as they speak.  *All* other verb forms, no
>matter what pattern they fall into, are memorized; the association is
>arbitrary, and forming "drank/drunk" from "drink" is no less work than
>forming "was/been" from "be", even if the pattern helps in the initial
>memorization.  This has been demonstrated in many
>experiments, is based on different kinds of observations, including
>types of speech errors and the amount of time required to produce a
>verb form.
>
>
>
I'd say the formation of words such as 'thunk' shows that we actually
know the rules, to some degree.  It shows we can apply the rules(albeit
to the wrong classes, but ones that look right).



>-Mark
>
>
>
>

Reply