Re: irregularities

<<Because presumably not all natural nouns have northern and
southern extensions, which was the stated reason for the
idiom.  It needs to make sense withint the context of the
culture in which it develops.>>

Oops!  I must not have read that part.

<<One that is, unfortunately, misleading.  Soundchange does
sometimes regularly alter the phonology to produce "irregularities"
in the morphology, but not always.  Sometimes regular phonological
changes result in the collapse of semantic distinctions. And
analogy can produce irregularity too:  the past tense of the
English verb _dive_ was originaly _dived_ in all English dialects.
In America, however, probably due to analogy with _drive_, the
past tense became _dove_ for some speakers.  The same goes for
"sneak, sneaked/snuck" from "stick, stuck", I think.>>

I was just putting forth an idea on how to increase irregularity. I wasn't
trying to come out and make some assertion that has to be always universally
true--there's barely anything that is. Geez!

-David