The Irregular Verbs (2000) | Hacker News Reader

The Irregular Verbs (2000)

pinker.wjh.harvard.edu

150 pointsggreer69 comments

In an awesome paper [1] published in 2007, it was shown that irregular English verbs have been dying out (i.e., "regularized") at an incredibly precise and measurable rate. The paper shows "how the rate of regularization depends on the frequency of word usage. The half-life of an irregular verb scales as the square root of its usage frequency: a verb that is 100 times less frequent regularizes 10 times as fast."

[1] "Quantifying the evolutionary dynamics of language" by Erez Lieberman, Jean-Baptiste Michel, [...], and Martin A. Nowak http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2460562/

I recently felt that effect in an old norse class here in Germany.

I had to translate brast into German. Bresta follows the 3rd class of strong verbs (old norse still has more or less rules for the strong verbs): bresta, brast, (brustum,) brostit - to burst, bursted, burst (archaic: to burst, brast, bursten)

The same verb also exists in German: bersten, barst, geborsten

However it's not that common today and the past tense is also extremely uncommon in speach. This led me inflect it weak (regular).

It is still there in Danish:

http://ordnet.dk/ods/ordbog?query=briste&search=S%C3%B8g

"bristede" is the common past tense but "brast" is still used occasionally.

It is indeed always interesting to see that it is not only the common words but also those little subleties, which are not noticable at the first glance, have survived in the different languages.

http://tyda.se/search/brista?lang[0]=en&lang[1]=de&lang[2]=s...

In Swedish, "brast" is the common and AFAIK only past tense of this word. Brista brast brustit.

As Steven Pinker points out in this very interesting article, the category of irregular verbs in English will surely shrink over time, as old, little used verbs become regularized over time, but new verbs formed in English are never formed as irregular verbs. For all that, though, "many of the irregulars can sleep securely, for they have two things on their side. One is their sheer frequency in the language. The ten commonest verbs in English (be, have, do, say, make, go, take, come, see, and get) are all irregular, and about 70% of the time we use a verb, it is an irregular verb. And children have a wondrous capacity for memorizing words; they pick up a new one every two hours, accumulating 60,000 by high school. Eighty irregulars are common enough that children use them before they learn to read, and I predict they will stay in the language indefinitely." Cool.

> As Steven Pinker points out in this very interesting article, the category of irregular verbs in English will surely shrink over time, as old, little used verbs become regularized over time, but new verbs formed in English are never formed as irregular verbs.

At least, until we start pronouncing "plated", "played", and "placed" so differently that kids wonder why they're all spelled the same :)

> the category of irregular verbs in English will surely shrink over time

I just don't think that's true.

English, like all other languages, is in an unbroken line of continuous speech from the first group of humans to use speech at all. (Or if you don't follow the theory of a single origin of language, an origin set of language users.) Where you place the borders between what you call "English" or "Middle English" or "unnamed branch of Old High Saxon spoken by a particularly small group of villages" is fuzzy, but nobody ever decided "What I was speaking 10 minutes ago was Language A but starting now this is called Language B and they're totally different in every way".

So we've been developing English for a very long time. If "little used verbs become regularized over time, but new verbs formed [are] never formed as irregular verbs", then why do we have still have irregular verbs at all? Why wouldn't they have been wiped out thousands of years ago?

In the most obvious cases, English hasn't changed at a uniform rate. It's experienced gradual splits, mergings, conquerings, being alternatingly a vulgar and prestige dialect, immigration, emmigration, wars, trade explosions, and regular old influence of other languages nearby.

The claim you're quoting seems to be that if a language is left to its own devices that it will gradually approach regularity. I definitely disagree that point, and there are somewhat well-understood methods for these changes it occur even in an isolated language (for instance, vowel shifts that affect some words more than others, after which words that used to follow the same rule no longer do). But let's set that aside. Even if we ignore the normal linguistic processes that can increase irregularity in an isolated language, what makes us think that the "artificial" events like wars or interactions with other languages will decrease? Why would those things stop?

Presumably, new irregular verbs used to appear, but no longer do. Groups of speakers are less isolated, we have a standardized written language, and demarcations between languages are clearer.

> Presumably, new irregular verbs used to appear, but no longer do

Why not? Have now we invented all of the words we need, but hadn't yet invented "seen" or "got" in 1200 AD? Then why would it stop now, instead of in 1200 AD?

> we have a standardized written language

But we've had written language for much longer than English has been around

Written language has become more prominent, recorded language has been introduced, and more of us experience some formal instruction in what the rules are. Those seem all like reasons new words are more likely to conform to the rules.

> But we've had written language for much longer than English has been around

We didn't have standardized spelling, a majority of speakers who could also read and write, or formal grammar education.

At one time, the "irregular" verbs were regular: English (or rather Proto-Germanic, the common ancestor language of English, German, Swedish, etc.) had two classes of regular verbs, strong and weak, and newly invented verbs could be added to either class. However, the strong class over time became somewhat obsolete and irregular, and is now relatively closed to adding new members (though not completely: sneak/snuck, dive/dove and shit/shat are relatively new additions -- certainly long post-dating the irregularization).

It's (supposedly) pronunciation changes that cause irregular words, right? You start with a regular rule, pronunciation of all words change so that the rule no longer works, all the uncommon words quickly regularize on a new rule, and what's left is irregular.

It's been a while since my last linguistics class, but that seems like the natural result of words retaining their pronunciation roughly according to how often they're used. That sounds like a continuous process we should expect to slow as pronunciation change slows (due to recorded media), but not necessarily to stop at some cut-off point.

New irregular verbs didn't appear, but new strong verbs. It's just that the strong verbs turned into irregular ones.

>So we've been developing English for a very long time. If "little used verbs become regularized over time, but new verbs formed [are] never formed as irregular verbs", then why do we have still have irregular verbs at all? Why wouldn't they have been wiped out thousands of years ago?

we haven't been developing English for thousands of years. Who knows what will happen then! We'll be speaking in python no doubt.

> We'll be speaking in python no doubt.

(Or this (Lisp (to (indicate identation-level) (using (pitch voice)))))

The low frequency of use of many of the irregular verbs in English and their restriction to activities mostly not talked about at home ensures, as Pinker correctly points out, that they are not part of the "unbroken line of continuous speech" that you write about. My ancestors trace back through the paternal line to English speakers for as far back in history as you can go and still find speakers of English. And the last few generations of my family have included college-educated English majors who were very fussy about proper rules of English grammar. But none of that passed on to me in living speech the "correct" (irregular, or "strong") forms of some of the irregular verbs in English. The attested historical process, as Pinker correctly writes, is that the category of "strong" verbs in English and in other Germanic languages has shrunk over time.

For onlookers, I should list here the English irregular verbs. All of you will see for yourselves how rarely used some of them are, and how unlikely it is that a child would learn them from home conversation. Others, of course, the ones we all know, are the ones Pinker thinks will last indefinitely. The ones with alternate forms shown are likely to become regular sooner, I think.

Abide Abode/Abided Abode/Abided/Abidden Abides Abiding

Alight Alit/Alighted Alit/Alighted Alights Alighting

Arise Arose Arisen Arises Arising

Awake Awoke Awoken Awakes Awaking

Be Was/Were Been Is Being

Bear Bore Born/Borne Bears Bearing

Beat Beat Beaten Beats Beating

Become Became Become Becomes Becoming

Begin Began Begun Begins Beginning

Behold Beheld Beheld Beholds Beholding

Bend Bent Bent Bends Bending

Bet Bet Bet Bets Betting

Bid Bade Bidden Bids Bidding

Bid Bid Bid Bids Bidding

Bind Bound Bound Binds Binding

Bite Bit Bitten Bites Biting

Bleed Bled Bled Bleeds Bleeding

Blow Blew Blown Blows Blowing

Break Broke Broken Breaks Breaking

Breed Bred Bred Breeds Breeding

Bring Brought Brought Brings Bringing

Build Built Built Builds Building

Burn Burnt/Burned Burnt/Burned Burns Burning

Burst Burst Burst Bursts Bursting

Bust Bust Bust Busts Busting

Buy Bought Bought Buys Buying

Cast Cast Cast Casts Casting

Catch Caught Caught Catches Catching

Choose Chose Chosen Chooses Choosing

Clap Clapped/Clapt Clapped/Clapt Claps Clapping

Cling Clung Clung Clings Clinging

Clothe Clad/Clothed Clad/Clothed Clothes Clothing

Come Came Come Comes Coming

Cost Cost Cost Costs Costing

Creep Crept Crept Creeps Creeping

Cut Cut Cut Cuts Cutting

Dare Dared/Durst Dared Dares Daring

Deal Dealt Dealt Deals Dealing

Dig Dug Dug Digs Digging

Dive Dived/Dove Dived Dives Diving

Do Did Done Does Doing

Draw Drew Drawn Draws Drawing

Dream Dreamt/Dreamed Dreamt/Dreamed Dreams Dreaming

Drink Drank Drunk Drinks Drinking

Drive Drove Driven Drives Driving

Dwell Dwelt Dwelt Dwells Dwelling

Eat Ate Eaten Eats Eating

[edit: the full list is just too darn long, but you'll get the idea from the beginning and end of the alphabet]

Make Made Made Makes Making

Mean Meant Meant Means Meaning

Meet Met Met Meets Meeting

Melt Melted Molten/Melted Melts Melting

Mislead Misled Misled Misleads Misleading

Mistake Mistook Mistaken Mistakes Mistaking

Mow Mowed Mown Mows Mowing

Pay Paid Paid Pays Paying

Preset Preset Preset Presets Presetting

Prove Proved Proven/Proved Proves Proving

Put Put Put Puts Putting

Quit Quit Quit Quits Quitting

Read Read Read Reads Reading

Rid Rid/Ridded Rid/Ridded Rids Ridding

Ride Rode Ridden Rides Riding

Ring Rang Rung Rings Ringing

Rise Rose Risen Rises Rising

Rive Rived Riven/Rived Rives Riving

Run Ran Run Runs Running

Saw Sawed Sawn/Sawed Saws Sawing

Say Said Said Says Saying

See Saw Seen Sees Seeing

Seek Sought Sought Seeks Seeking

Sell Sold Sold Sells Selling

Send Sent Sent Sends Sending

Set Set Set Sets Setting

Sew Sewed Sewn/Sewed Sews Sewing

Shake Shook Shaken Shakes Shaking

Shave Shaved Shaven/Shaved Shaves Shaving

Shear Shore/Sheared Shorn/Sheared Shears Shearing

Shed Shed Shed Sheds Shedding

Shine Shone Shone Shines Shining

Shoe Shod Shod Shoes Shoeing

Shoot Shot Shot Shoots Shooting

Show Showed Shown Shows Showing

Shrink Shrank Shrunk Shrinks Shrinking

Shut Shut Shut Shuts Shutting

Sing Sang Sung Sings Singing

Sink Sank Sunk Sinks Sinking

Sit Sat Sat Sits Sitting

Slay Slew Slain Slays Slaying

Sleep Slept Slept Sleeps Sleeping

Slide Slid Slid/Slidden Slides Sliding

Sling Slung Slung Slings Slinging

Slink Slunk Slunk Slinks Slinking

Slit Slit Slit Slits Slitting

Smell Smelt/Smelled Smelt/Smelled Smells Smelling

Sneak Sneaked/Snuck Sneaked/Snuck Sneaks Sneaking

Sow Sowed Sown Sows Sowing

Speak Spoke Spoken Speaks Speaking

Speed Sped/Speeded Sped/Speeded Speeds Speeding

Spell Spelt/Spelled Spelt/Spelled Spells Spelling

Spend Spent Spent Spends Spending

Spill Spilt/Spilled Spilt/Spilled Spills Spilling

Spin Span/Spun Spun Spins Spinning

Spit Spat/Spit Spat/Spit Spits Spitting

Split Split Split Splits Splitting

Spoil Spoilt/Spoiled Spoilt/Spoiled Spoils Spoiling

Spread Spread Spread Spreads Spreading

Spring Sprang Sprung Springs Springing

Stand Stood Stood Stands Standing

Steal Stole Stolen Steals Stealing

Stick Stuck Stuck Sticks Sticking

Sting Stung Stung Stings Stinging

Stink Stank Stunk Stinks Stinking

Stride Strode/Strided Stridden Strides Striding

Strike Struck Struck/Stricken Strikes Striking

String Strung Strung Strings Stringing

Strip Stript/Stripped Stript/Stripped Strips Stripping

Strive Strove Striven Strives Striving

Swear Swore Sworn Swears Swearing

Sweat Sweat/Sweated Sweat/Sweated Sweats Sweating

Sweep Swept/Sweeped Swept/Sweeped Sweeps Sweeping

Swell Swelled Swollen Swells Swelling

Swim Swam Swum Swims Swimming

Swing Swung Swung Swings Swinging

Take Took Taken Takes Taking

Teach Taught Taught Teaches Teaching

Tear Tore Torn Tears Tearing

Tell Told Told Tells Telling

Think Thought Thought Thinks Thinking

Thrive Throve/Thrived Thriven/Thrived Thrives Thriving

Throw Threw Thrown Throws Throwing

Thrust Thrust Thrust Thrusts Thrusting

Tread Trod Trodden Treads Treading

Vex Vext/Vexed Vext/Vexed Vexes Vexing

Wake Woke Woken Wakes Waking

Wear Wore Worn Wears Wearing

Weave Wove Woven Weaves Weaving

Wed Wed/Wedded Wed/Wedded Weds Wedding

Weep Wept Wept Weeps Weeping

Wend Wended/Went Wended/Went Wends Wending

Wet Wet/Wetted Wet/Wetted Wets Wetting

Win Won Won Wins Winning

Wind Wound Wound Winds Winding

Wring Wrung Wrung Wrings Wringing

Write Wrote Written Writes Writing

Instead of posting a lengthy and yet incomplete list, perhaps next time you could oblige us with a shorter list of examples, a hyperlink to the full list, or both.

Seems to be similar to a list at http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/irregular-verbs/

You make several false assumptions or gross misunderstandings of how language changes.

The reason irregular verbs originally existed is because English is a Germanic language, meaning, that a thousand years ago, what we now call irregular verbs were actually regular verbs. There was a logical ordering and well understood way to modify the stem of a verb in order to agree with the subject and tense. At the time, irregular verbs changed their stem, but in a predictable and universal manner.

This all changed with the conquest of the Norman French. After the slow introduction of French and Latin into English, the verb forms we are now familiar with entered the language. In time, all verbs of Germanic origin were used the same way they had been used in Old English, while verbs brought in by the French used the forms we are familiar with today.

The reason it makes sense to see language regularization is because we have grown to expect the French form of verb agreement rather than the Germanic one. The Germanic system is more complex.

In short, the reason that "new verbs formed [are] never formed as irregular verbs ..." makes sense, is that the change from irregular Germanic verbs to regular French verbs is only about 800 years old.

> You make several false assumptions or gross misunderstandings of how language changes.

That's a little over the top. I only made a few claims, none specific to English:

Claim #1: There a processes that create and remove irregularities in a language. Some of these can occur in isolation, some are interactions with other languages.

Claim #2: At the very least, the ones resulting from interaction will continue to occur in the future. That is, we still have wars and immigration.

Claim #3: Implicit to my argument is my opinion that the creations occur approximately at the rate of the removals.

Certainly #3 there is the hardest to justify (and I only offer "they aren't gone yet" as my evidence). A much easier and not too different claim is "we won't reach 100% regularity" and if you like you can pretend that I argued that instead as it's not too different a claim. But "gross misunderstanding" seems unfair.

So which of these is a gross misunderstanding of language changes?

Sorry but this is totally wrong. The weak inflection in english with a dental suffix is an proto-germanic invention shared with all germanic languages.

The reason why there are so many weak verbs is that the rules for strong verbs complicated over time so that the rules weren't obvious anymore and that the verbs were seen just as irregular (there is thought to have been just two verb classes originally in PIE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_ablaut, but there are already 7 of them in the old germanic languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_strong_verb#Strong_ver...). Therefore new verbs couldn't be integrated as strong verbs by analogy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_weak_verb#Origins_of_t...

> but new verbs formed in English are never formed as irregular verbs

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/twote#English

Granted, it's definitely not winning out over "tweeted".

> The ten commonest verbs in English...

Until reading that, and subsequently confirming accepted usage, I never would have used commonest as the superlative of common.

That's because most common is the commonest: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=most+common%2C...

Only among commoners.

Choosing between more/er and most/est has always seemed quite random to me for two syllable adjectives. The problem with English is that there ALWAYS seems to be an exception to the rule.

Actually, "commonest" seems to mostly be a British English thing, while "most common" is American English, in my experience.

Really? I've never heard it before, and it was so jarring to read that I came to the comments specifically looking for other people saying so...

Speaking of superlatives reminded me of that Old Spice ad 'Freshershist', have you seen it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBV5Jsk6g5k

If I may take this unique opportunity, does anybody know of a command line tool (say "past") such as wn [1] that could output something like the following?

  $ past go
  go went gone

I'm talking about a stand-alone program that would work offline. Thanks!

[1] https://wordnet.princeton.edu/wordnet/man/wn.1WN.html

dict is installable locally and can use a dict server on localhost to look up words offline/

There are only 180 itregular verbs, the script would be trivial to make (not more than 10 minutes in Perl including testing).

Tokenadult lists them all here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8738342

> a Boston eatery once sold T-shirts that read "I got schrod at Legal Seafood"

Actually it was spelled "scrod". I used to have one of those T-shirts. I believe the full legend was "I got scrod last night at Legal Seafood".

Ref.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrod

Try Polish! I would say that every word here is irregular (seven cases and three tenses).

Few forms of simple "to be": jestem, byłem, będę, jesteś, byłeś, będziesz, jest, był, była, było, będzie, jesteśmy, byliśmy, będziemy, jesteście, byliście, będziecie, są, byli, były, będą.

good luck ;)

Your comment seems irrelevant - the article never claimed that english has the most (or even a lot of) irregular verbs. If you have some linguistic insights regarding irregular verbs in Polish I would be curious to hear them (I really mean it)

Your comment seems irrelevant - the grandparent never claimed that polish has the most (only many) irregular verbs. If you have some pedantic insights regarding relevant comments on Hacker News I would be curious to hear them (I really mean it)

> Not only is the irregular class losing members by emigration, it is not gaining new ones by immigration. When new verbs enter English via onomatopoeia (to ding, to ping), borrowings from other languages (deride and succumb from Latin), and conversions from nouns (fly out), the regular rule has first dibs on them. The language ends up with dinged, pinged, derided, succumbed, and flied out, not dang, pang, derode, succame, or flew out.

I'd love a quick straw poll. Who says flied out?

I've only ever heard flew out - I've never heard anyone say "I flied out yesterday."

Context is a fly ball in baseball, a noun. No relation to the common holiday activity.

People on planes "flew out". Baseballs, however "flied out".

Baseballs have still "flown out", since they fly through the air in the normal sense; it is their hitters who have "flied out".

In fact, if I understand the rules of baseball, it's only players whose balls fail to fly out who, themselves, fly out!

It's a baseball term.

It's not referring to air travel. It's a baseball term (which I only know because he mentioned it earlier in the essay).

"In baseball, one says that a slugger has flied out; no mere mortal has ever "flown out" to center field."

It seems I skimmed the whole thing a bit too quickly. I didn't realise it was a baseball term. It sounds so wrong to me.

Same here, but as a non-native speaker fairly common expressions (in the US) such as "I should've went" and "I should've came" sound way worse!

Those sound awful by any account.

Does anyone else say "I've pung that IP address" ?

Honestly "pang" (past tense) and "pung" (past participle) don't sound terrible to me, in analogy to sing/ring. Native English speaker from USA, if that matters.

Heh, yep.

I have heard and used both flew out and flied out in the past.

The real question is how rule based natural language systems can evolve. Otherwise they are subject to becoming moribund.

Of course that's not simply learning the latest usages on the cutting edge of human language evolution. Rather, natural language AI evolves concurrently with the technology people use to communicate, which technology (heavily?) influences their language use.

I'd go so far as to suggest the influence of technology on language is more important than historical rules of verbiage and exceptions.

Long live the irregulars! Having said that, I would surmise that the past tense of a hockey stick is a tree. I just couldn't say which kind, I'm not an expert.

The thing with the most commonest verbs "come" and "go" is they're the same verb but with different directionalities, just as "come" and "came" is the same but with different tenses. Ditto "bring" and "take". So the form irregularity sits not only on the tense but also the direction of movement.

Thank God there's only 180 irregular verbs in English. I remember slogging my way through 501 French Verbs in high school to limited success.

http://www.amazon.com/501-French-Verbs-Barrons-Language/dp/0...

I <3 the ending - 'and that is how our youngest irregular, snuck, sneaked in.'

If you like irregular verbs so much learn a Slavic language :)

> In between blow-blew and grow-grew sits glow-glowed.

What a same. I quite like the sound of "glew". It glew with the light of a thousands suns.

i've had a pet theory that irregularity helps memorization. the thought is that when something is deducible rather than arbitrary, you remember the rule, not the result of the rule. when its arbitrary, you just remember it. does anyone know of anything to suggest this is true or false?

Only barely related, but I do know that the speed limit in the parking lot at my local mall is 18 MPH. Not 15 or 20, but 18. And of course the only reason I know that is because they choosed an arbitrary value and not a standard "slow parking lot" value.

The fact that the 10 commonest verbs are all irregular seems to agree with your theory,

I just hope people will eventually stop typing "payed" for paid and "loose" for lose.

What's to say that "payed" won't end up winning in the end? I mean, it's a hell of a lot more logical, pay->payed, than pay->paid.

The really amusing part about loose vs. lose is that both have a negative connotation, so the similarity in sense lends a dissonance to the "attuned eye" not unlike two musical notes slightly off pitch played interchangeably.

If you want to control language evolution, perhaps you'd prefer the existence of something like the Académie Française and invented words like "courriel"?

"Courriel" was actually invented by the Office québécois de la langue française. But your point stands.

As far as I know the corresponding, and pretty great, word for spam, "pourriel", came from the streets.

At some point "to google" will be so old, it will become irregular too.

You mean like "Yesterday, I giggled"?

Also possibly like geegled, from gögled, or goegled. The old way was for broad vowels to become slender, for either pluralisation of nouns or for thingumming of verbs. A, O, and U would be broad vowels, and I and E slender, and the whole bucket of dipthongs follow somehow.

Or should it be that the whole bucket of dipthongs follows? I, personally, support metonymic shifts.

does it have to end in -ed? google/gogle/goglen, a-la "choose". e.g:

"Googlicity is defined as the ratio of people who gogle your name in the last year over the total number of times you have been goglen."

You're right, strong verbs never get -ed at the end.

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