Re: (In)transitive verbs

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004, Tristan McLeay wrote:

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004, Trebor Jung wrote:

> Merhaba!
>
> Padraic wrote:
>
> > "If there's a consistent pattern of formation, then I'd say they form
> > a "regular" group.
>
> I agree.
Internal similarities are one thing, overall consistency is another. The
past tense of regular verbs are rule-based: root+(if last sound of root t
or d:  /@d/ else if last sound of root unvoiced: /t/ else /d/). Of all the
rest, it's lexically based: drink/drank.

> Tristan wrote:
>
> > "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.
>
> Could someone please explain what these terms mean?
Which ones?

Three-way distinction: things are classified into three different groups
   (here strong/weak/irregular)
Strong: verbs which form their past tense/participle based on historic
   ablaut.
Weak: verbs which form their past tense/participle based on a dental
   suffix.
Irregular: (a) something which stands outside the regular pattern, where
   a regular pattern is something like the -ed rule in English. (b)
   something which can't be described on historic rules. John and I go by
   the first defn, Padraic by the second.
Note that some verbs (e.g. sleep/slept) are strong, weak *and* irregular,
whereas some similar ones (e.g. dream/dreamt) are just weak and irregular.

Subdivisions: a lower-level classification. As an example, strong verbs
    are those which alter the root vowel to form their past tense/past
    participle, but these can be classified as Class I, Class II,
    Class III etc. based on what kinds of alternations happen (if you want
    to know what they are, check a good grammar of any Germanic language).
over: instead of (i.e. it's more important, i.e. higher in a hierarchy)
most irregular verbs are weak: most irregular verbs are verbs like
    think:thought, buy:bought which form their past tense by a dental
    suffix and explain away the irregularities based on historical sound
    changes starting from Common Germanic, so these are shared through
    many of the Germanic langs.

> Tristan:
>
> > "Also, ask your average (naïve)
>
> I've only seen naive with a trema over the <i> once or twice. Which is
> correct? (Or is it like 'mosquitos vs. mosquitoes'?)
In French, it demands the diaerisis. In English, it doesn't care; English
is not known for its accent-happiness. If you would say that facade, cafe
or El Nino are wrong, then you would say that naive is wrong. If you would
say that façade, café or El Niño are pedantic, you would say that naïve is
pedantic.

> > > "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...
>
> Padraic:
>
> > "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.
>
> Yep :((( . That's what I'm being taught, too :((( .
With good reason, too. It's a lot easier to have the synchronically rule-
based verbs in one group and the synchronically memorised verbs in another
group (note what John and Mark have been saying). What better terminology
exists than regular and irregular? Just about everything else I can think
of means 'regular' and 'irregular' (rule-based, systematic, ...) or is
overly broad and would catch some irregulars into the regulars (weak,
dental etc.)

> > "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.
>
> This is why when I take over the world, I will ensure textbooks of
> language are written properly, and special teachers are trained to
> teach linguistics to the masses! Any volunteers? :))
'Written properly' ... what does that mean? Much of linguistics is
opinion. Some people think historics trumps synchronics. Others say the
way it is now is how it should be described today, no matter how it was/
was described yesterday or will be tomorrow.

> What are English's tenses, moods, aspects etc.? (I read once that
> someone tho't that 'plural' was a tense!!)
Tenses: past and non-past. The non-past is often called present, which is
mistaken; it usually represents the habitual mood, as well as also
sometimes being future or simple present, among others.

As to the rest, you might find <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tense> at
least vaguely useful. Follow the links for more...



--
Tristan.

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