Hacking Language: A New Past Tense | Hacker News Reader

Hacking Language: A New Past Tense

penzba.co.uk

> I wonder if it will spread ...

Nope. The irregular forms are slowly disappearing, the least frequent first. I would give you a citation, but I am supposed to be cleaning out the basement, not surfing HN.

Another article on uncommon verbs becoming regular, and related ideas:

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/sci-tech/lesser-used-wor...

It might happen. German has many of the same ablaut series as english, so where english has sink-sank-sunk and wink-winked-winked, the corresponding german cognates have sinken-sank-gesunken and winken-winkte-gewinkt. But many people now use the early 70ies joke "gewunken" and think that "gewinkt" sounds weird.

Link on irregular verb decay:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-486935/How-irregular...

Ah, you've reminded me, I meant to include that.

Using information theory and Zipf's Law, the hypothesis is that irregular forms arise provided both that they are shorter, and the verb is common enough to make the gains made outweigh the extra effort in learning the exception. As a result, irregular forms that are falling out of common usage revert to the longer, regular form.

The interesting thing about this alternative regular form is that it's also shorter than the "ED" version. Net result is that more verbs should take this regular form because both forces - shortness and regularity - act in the direction of adoption.

I'll update the musing tomorrow. Thanks.

Indeed. I personally have never used "swum", and I'd struggle to come up with an example where "swam" won't fit in just as perfectly.

"I had swum to the island, but was too tired to swim back."

i see.. so "swum" is the passive form of "swim" then?

You have to bear in mind that many languages have no marking for tense whatever, and English could certainly develop in that direction. The only language (Mandarin) that possibly has more speakers than English has no marking for tense on any of its verbs.

If I'm not mistaken, these verbs are called "strong verbs" and are a nice holdover from Old English. Stink, stank, stunk. Drink, drank, drunk. Sing, sang, sung. Etc.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_strong_verb

For people who love where words and such came from, I can't recommend highly enough the Teaching Company's "History of the English Language"

http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=2250

This classic short story about language modification is always worth a few laughs. If you want a real language hack then read it:

Mayhem in ce Klasrum by by Dolton Edwards from Isaac Asimov's 'The Golden Years of Science Fiction'

http://www.english-zone.com/index.php?page=1114&pid=81

Past tense of swim is swam right?

http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/swam.html

I don't know how many people do this (invent word forms), but I definitely do. Here's a sample:

freak out > froke out > froken out

the plural of house is obviously hice, and toothbrush becomes teethbrush.

Of course, I have to be careful when speaking in public so I don't end up sounding like Ned Flanders.

Then thunk is also the past form of thank. What's the past tense form of "The weight thunk to the floor"? I think it will be harder to learn, even given the exceptions, if we remove the common stem from all verbs and their past participles.

Worth thinking about though.

Here's a list with a few suggestions:

http://verben.texttheater.de/Englisch

I like those, they feel good somehow. Must be the ancestral Germanic genes' influence. Nice & definite sounding, stronger.

edit: well, a lot of them...

There are from the Verb Empowerment Society (Gesellschaft zur Stärkung der Verben). It's a bad pun, since a `strong' verb is a irregular verb in German.

more interesting is david bohm's idea of the 'rheomode'

"One could say that nouns do not really exist, only verbs exist. A noun is just a “slow” verb; that is, it refers to a process that is progressing so slowly so as to appear static."

http://wik.inormous.net/index.php?title=Rheomode

What he suggests is done, but in a more general way, in the constructed language "lojban". There the fundamental concept is the predicate (loosely equivalent to verb) and "nouns" are extracted/abstracted places from the predicates.

Thus "mi tavla do" is "I speak to you", so "le tavla" is "the speaker" and "le se tavla" is "the listener". In this example, "mi" and "do" are the equivalent of pronouns.

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Lojban+Introductory+Brochure

Like speed, process, lightning vs to crawl, to last, to wait?

It's hard to see originality in this. Just google "who would've thunk".

Yes, but in your construction, you're using a popular pseudo-participle form of to think. The author of the article is suggesting that we use these weird ablaut/umlaut morphs in place of the preterite. For example, "I thought" would then become "I thunk".

A few things to note: 1. It's not at all my construction. That's precisely why it's hard to see originality in this. 2. If you read his post carefully, you'll see that the author isn't aware of distinction between past simple and present perfect, let alone of ablaut: he confuses "swam" and "swum" and then proceeds to use the newly invented past tense form of "cutch" in present perfect. 3. Ablaut would be along the lines of think-thank-thunk -- something the author is not suggesting. 4. Think and catch already have the "weird umlaut morph". Changing it to the "swim-swam-swum" pattern is, like I said, nothing new.

I would reply directly, but haven't been able to find your email, so a brief response here:

Originality is hard to pin down. I've never seen it suggested that this should be a new regular form, rather than an ad hoc collection of joke forms. I've never before heard "lunk" and "cluck" used like this. Has anyone else? Is that original? I'm not a grammar expert, no doubt I've may have missed some. Besides, if I'm re-inventing, then perhaps it truly is an idea whose time has come (yes - joking)

I am aware of the differences between present perfect, simple past, past continuitive, past perfect, past pluperfect, etc, but I was trying to avoid having this turn into an article on grammar. For one, although I have a working knowledge I'm not an expert, for another, that wasn't the point.

Good catch about "cutch" in the present perfect. I'll need to re-write an earlier part to make it clear that it's not really the "past tense", but the "word form usually used for the past tense" (avoiding technical grammatical terms).

I appreciate your observations - thanks.

Your hack is broken: run -> ruun?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com