Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: (In)transitive verbs

From:Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Date:Friday, February 13, 2004, 1:26
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. -Mark

Reply

Joe <joe@...>