Re: (In)transitive verbs

--- Tristan McLeay <zsau@...> wrote:

> > Yes. As I've said. And of course, we can
>choose
> > which approach to take. Personally, I do not
> > follow the "Irregular/Regular" scheme; I use
>the
> > "Strong/Weak/Irregular" Germanic scheme. I
>think
> > it fits the data better. [Keep in mind that
>in
> > scientific endeavour, the theory should fit
>the
> > data, not the other way around!] And it also
>has
> > more room for important subdivisions of that
> > data. The other scheme is arbitrary and
>forces
> > the data to fit the theory.
>Note that my original post that started this
>discussion was about
>-et > -et verbs. Do you deny that these are
>irregular?
If there's a consistent pattern of formation, then I'd say
they form a "regular" group.

>And secondly, what advantage is there to make a
>three-way distinction
>strong/weak/irregular with a few subdivisions
>in strong and irregular over
>regular/irregular with the strong subdivisions
>in irregular, bearing in
>mind that technically, most* irregular verbs
>are weak (ones like
>think/thought, set/set, do/did (at least, I
>think it's weak.
It fits the data best. I think that the strong/weak
distinction works best, as it totally ignores what might be
seen as currently irregular. Though I agree with your later
statement that ablaut/dental might be better.

>Also, ask your average (naïve) English speaker
>to classify a bunch of
>random verbs. All the ablauting verbs they'll
>put with to think and to be in the irregular pile...
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.

Likewise with verbs and all those crazy Latin tenses that English
doesn't really have. I looked at Sihler's description of the English
verb and immediately said "That makes SENSE!!" - and that was
just a couple years ago.

These alternative schemes make sense because they describe what
English is, rather than prescribe what English ought to be.

>And given the connotations of 'strong', I
>really think it's inappropriate
>to call English irregular verbs formed by
>ablaut 'strong'. But that's just me...
I don't disagree, regarding the terminology. Ablaut/dental might be
better, and is certainly more descriptive.

Padraic.

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