Re: THEORY: Verbs go irregular before our very eyes!

And Rosta wrote:


> If Set III stems are all V-final, then Set I stems, the C-final ones, can
> be made regular by a rule that deletes the t- from -tia. That leaves Set
> II as those with unconditioned t-deletion.

Synchronically that's possible, but it's hard to see any reasonable
explanation for just those verbs having an unconditioned deletion.
Diachronically, the notion that Maori has moved from a situation
with both C-final and V-final stems using regular phonologically
conditioned passivation, to a situation with only V-final stems
and regular/irregular passivation (with irregulars numerically
dominant) seems quite satisfying.

> From the learner's point
> of view, none of this makes any difference; my point is just that from the
> analyst's point of view, varying degrees of ingenuity will find varying
> degrees of regularity.

Granted.  But the distinction between regularity and irregularity
is not purely an analytical convenience: there are testable differences
between what is processed by the syntax-rule-machine and what is
processed by the pattern-associator-machine.  (We need to talk to
some Maori speakers with genetic defects!)


> More generally, though, I believe that unless (as in English) regular
> and irregular inflection have phonologically different repercussions,
> inflectional (ir)regularity is largely an irrelevance to the existing
> lexicon.

Can you expand on this?   What different repercussions, and what
existing lexicon?

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