Re: L1 learning question

Pablo Flores wrote:
> Oh yes, the children do recognize it, but they make the mistake anyway.
> These *are* irregularities, because nowadays Spanish doesn't distinguish
> vowels by tenseness, so there's no way you could know where a modern /o/
> came from. So you may have
>
> "toser" -> "yo toso"
> "mover" -> "yo muevo"
They're unpredictable, but I wouldn't call them *irregular*, simply
because they *are* so common.  It's sort of like the Strong Verbs in Old
English, which were only semi-predictable.

Also, I've read a suggestion that the basic form of the verb in Spanish
be considered to be the infinitive *and* the third person singular
present indicative, i.e., instead of just saying "mover" as the basic
form, you'd say that the basic form was "mover/mueve", which would
automatically make most stem-changing verbs "regular", with a few
exceptions like "tener".  Third person was chosen because first person
singular often has additional irregularities, like _tengo_ and other
"-go" verbs.

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