Re: (In)transitive verbs

--- Tristan McLeay <zsau@...> 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.
It's not a matter of "justification". It's a
matter of terminology set. Strong and weak tends
to be used of Germanic languages, while regular
and irregular tends to be used of Latin and
Romance. English grammar originally got its terms
from Latin grammarians, not historical
philologists. If you look at grammars of English
written by the latter (Wright, etc) you won't
find the terms "regular" and "irregular" used to
describe verbs like these. On the other hand, if
you look at a grammar written by an English Lit.
type, chances are pretty good you'll see verbs
unaccountably sorted into regular and irregular.

The regular/irregular argument is based on
perception and subjective understanding, and
makes the mistake of throwing together all sorts
of verbs that do not share any characteristics
except that they do not form their preterite in
-ed. Poor scholarship. The above simply describes
the system as it is from the observed facts.

Padraic.


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