Re: OT: English and schizophrenia

Jesse Bangs wrote:
> But verbs--ho, boy, English verbs are about the easiest you'll ever see.
Yep.  Even the most irregular verbs aren't that hard to learn.
Go/goes/went/gone/going.  Five forms, that's it.  Be has 8.  And
actually, the -ing form is 100% regular, and the -s form has only a few
verbs with that irregular (do, be, and have, I think that's it).  So,
really, all you need to learn is three forms, the base form, the past
tense, and the past participle.  A lot easier than learning a whole
*paradigm* of an irregular verb.

> In Latin and Greek, for example, the concept of 'regular verb' isn't even
> applicable; each verb has several different forms that serve as the stems
> for various tenses and moods, called "principal parts."  But the
> principal parts aren't predictable from each other, so they must be
> memorized
Not entirely.  -are verbs especially are pretty predictable.  Regular
-are verbs have forms ending in -o:, -a:re, -a:vi, and -a:tum.  -e:re
verbs are usually -eo:, -e:re, -ui:, -itum, and -i:re verbs are -io:,
-i:re, -i:vi:, and -i:tum.  -ere verbs, on the other hand, are pretty
much a collection of irregularities.

--
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