English irregular verbs
Encyclopedia
The English language
has a large number of irregular verb
s. In the great majority of these, the past participle and/or past tense
is not formed according to the usual patterns of English regular verbs. Other parts of the verb — such as the present 3rd person singular -s or -es, and present participle -ing — may still be formed regularly.
Among the exceptions are the verb to be and certain defective verb
s which cannot be conjugated into certain tenses.
Most English irregular verbs are native, originating in Old English
(an exception being 'catch' from Old North French 'cachier'.) They also tend to be the most commonly used verbs. The ten most commonly used verbs in English are all irregular.
Steven Pinker
's book Words and Rules
discusses how mistakes made by children in learning irregular verbs throw light on the mental processes involved in language acquisition
.
All loanwords from foreign languages are regular, as are verbs that have been recently coined and all nouns used as verbs use standard suffixes. Almost all of the least commonly used words are also regular, even though some of them may have been irregular in the past.
fell into a class of words where the vowel in keep (then pronounced kehp) was shortened in the past tense. Similar words, such as peep, that arose after the Vowel Shift, use the regular -ed suffix. Groups of irregular verbs include:
Other verbs have been changed due to ease of pronunciation so that it is shorter or more closely corresponds to how it is spelled.
There are fewer strong verbs and irregular verbs in modern English than there were in Old English
. Slowly over time, the number of irregular verbs is decreasing. The force of analogy
tends to reduce the number of irregular verbs over time. This fact explains the reason that irregular verbs tend to be the most commonly used ones; verbs that are more rarely heard are more likely to switch to being regular. For instance, the verb chide was once irregular (chid), but today chided is the standard usage. Today irregular and standard forms often coexist, a sign that the irregular form may be on the wane. For instance, seeing spelled instead of spelt or strived instead of strove is very common.
On the other hand, contraction
and sound changes can increase their number. Most of the strong verbs were regular, in that they fell into a conventional plan of conjugation, in Old English; there are so few of them left in contemporary English that they seem irregular to us.
In common with most Indo-European languages, in English, such common verbs as to be, to go, to do, and to have are extremely irregular. Many also have pronunciations that are not predictable from the spelling.
Common patterns of irregularity in the past tense include:
Note that broadcasted is also acceptable as the past participle and past simple of the verb broadcast.
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
has a large number of irregular verb
Irregular verb
In contrast to regular verbs, irregular verbs are those verbs that fall outside the standard patterns of conjugation in the languages in which they occur. The idea of an irregular verb is important in second language acquisition, where the verb paradigms of a foreign language are learned...
s. In the great majority of these, the past participle and/or past tense
Past tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
is not formed according to the usual patterns of English regular verbs. Other parts of the verb — such as the present 3rd person singular -s or -es, and present participle -ing — may still be formed regularly.
Among the exceptions are the verb to be and certain defective verb
Defective verb
In linguistics, a defective verb is a verb which is missing e.g. a past tense, or cannot be used in some other way that normal verbs come. Formally, it is a verb with an incomplete conjugation. Defective verbs cannot be conjugated in certain tenses, aspects, or moods.-Arabic:In Arabic, defective...
s which cannot be conjugated into certain tenses.
Most English irregular verbs are native, originating in Old English
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
(an exception being 'catch' from Old North French 'cachier'.) They also tend to be the most commonly used verbs. The ten most commonly used verbs in English are all irregular.
Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
's book Words and Rules
Words and Rules
Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language is a 1999 popular linguistics book by Steven Pinker on the subject of regular and irregular verbs...
discusses how mistakes made by children in learning irregular verbs throw light on the mental processes involved in language acquisition
Language acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with...
.
All loanwords from foreign languages are regular, as are verbs that have been recently coined and all nouns used as verbs use standard suffixes. Almost all of the least commonly used words are also regular, even though some of them may have been irregular in the past.
Origin
Most irregular verbs exist as remnants of historical conjugation systems. What is today an exception actually followed a set, normal rule long ago. When that rule fell into disuse, some verbs kept the old conjugation. An example of this is the word kept, which before the Great Vowel ShiftGreat Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in England between 1350 and 1500.The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen , a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term....
fell into a class of words where the vowel in keep (then pronounced kehp) was shortened in the past tense. Similar words, such as peep, that arose after the Vowel Shift, use the regular -ed suffix. Groups of irregular verbs include:
- The remaining strong verbsStrong inflectionA strong inflection is a system of verb conjugation or noun/adjective declension which can be contrasted with an alternative system in the same language, which is then known as a weak inflection. The term strong was coined with reference to the Germanic verb, but has since been used of other...
, which display the vowel shift called ablautIndo-European ablautIn linguistics, ablaut is a system of apophony in Proto-Indo-European and its far-reaching consequences in all of the modern Indo-European languages...
and sometimes have a past participle in -en or -n: e.g., ride/rode/ridden. This verb group was inherited from the parent Proto-Germanic languageProto-Germanic languageProto-Germanic , or Common Germanic, as it is sometimes known, is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all the Germanic languages, such as modern English, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Luxembourgish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, and Swedish.The Proto-Germanic language is...
, and ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European languageProto-Indo-European languageThe Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
, and was originally an entirely regular system. In Old EnglishOld English languageOld English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
and still in modern GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, it is more or less regular, but in modern English the system of strong verb classes has almost entirely collapsed. For the history of these, see the article Germanic strong verbGermanic strong verbIn the Germanic languages, a strong verb is one which marks its past tense by means of ablaut. In English, these are verbs like sing, sang, sung...
. - Weak verbsWeak inflectionIn grammar, the term weak is used in opposition to the term strong to designate a conjugation or declension when a language has two parallel systems...
that have been subjected to sound changes over the course of the history of English that have rendered them irregular. Many of these acquired a long vowelVowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
in the present stem, but kept a short vowel in the preterite and past participle; e.g., hear/heard/heard. - Weak verbs that show the vowel shift are sometimes called "Rückumlaut" in the present tense e.g. think/thought. On these, see the articles Germanic umlautGermanic umlautIn linguistics, umlaut is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vowel or semivowel. The term umlaut was originally coined and is used principally in connection with the study of the Germanic languages...
and Germanic weak verbGermanic weak verbIn Germanic languages, including English, weak verbs are by far the largest group of verbs, which are therefore often regarded as the norm, though historically they are not the oldest or most original group.-General description:...
. - Weak verbs that end in a final -t or -d that made the addition of the weak suffix -ed seem redundant; e.g., cost/cost/cost.
- A handful of surviving preterite-present verbs. These can be distinguished from the rest because their third person simple present singular (the he, she, or it form) does not take a final -s. These are the remnants of what was once a large Indo-European class of verbs that were conjugated in the preterite or perfect with present tensePresent tenseThe present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
meaning. All of the surviving verbs of this class are modal verbs, that is, a class of auxiliary verbAuxiliary verbIn linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
s or quasi-auxiliaries; e.g., can/could/-. - Verbs that contain suppletive forms, which form one or more of their tenses from an entirely different root. Be is one of these, as is go/went/gone (where went is originally from the verb to wend). On the history of their paradigms, see: go (verb)Go (verb)Go is an irregular English verb whose basic definition is "to move from one place to another". Be and go are the only English verbs with a suppletive past tense.-Principal parts:...
and Indo-European copulaIndo-European copulaA feature common to all Indo-European languages is the presence of a verb corresponding to the English verb to be. Though in some languages, such as Russian, it is vestigial, it is present nonetheless in atrophied forms or derivatives.-General features:...
.
Other verbs have been changed due to ease of pronunciation so that it is shorter or more closely corresponds to how it is spelled.
- A number of verbs whose irregularity is chiefly due to the peculiarities of English spelling; e.g., lay/laid/laid.
- Past tense ending -ed written phonetically when devoiced to -t; e.g., burn/burnt/burnt (which also has a regular conjugation with a [d] pronunciation).
- Weak verbs that have been the subject of contractions; e.g., have/had/had.
There are fewer strong verbs and irregular verbs in modern English than there were in Old English
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
. Slowly over time, the number of irregular verbs is decreasing. The force of analogy
Analogy
Analogy is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject to another particular subject , and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process...
tends to reduce the number of irregular verbs over time. This fact explains the reason that irregular verbs tend to be the most commonly used ones; verbs that are more rarely heard are more likely to switch to being regular. For instance, the verb chide was once irregular (chid), but today chided is the standard usage. Today irregular and standard forms often coexist, a sign that the irregular form may be on the wane. For instance, seeing spelled instead of spelt or strived instead of strove is very common.
On the other hand, contraction
Contraction (grammar)
A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters....
and sound changes can increase their number. Most of the strong verbs were regular, in that they fell into a conventional plan of conjugation, in Old English; there are so few of them left in contemporary English that they seem irregular to us.
In common with most Indo-European languages, in English, such common verbs as to be, to go, to do, and to have are extremely irregular. Many also have pronunciations that are not predictable from the spelling.
- be
- Present: 1sg am (/æm/), 3sg is (/ɪz/), others are (/ɑː/)
- Past: 1sg, 3sg was (/wɒz/), others were (/wɜː/)
- Past participle: been (/biːn/)
- go (/ɡəʊ/)
- Present: 3sg goes
- Past: went
- Past participle: gone (/ɡɒn/)
- do (/duː/)
- Present: 3sg does (/dʌz/)
- Past: did (/dɪd/)
- Past participle: done (/dʌn/)
- have (/hæv/)
- Present: 3sg has (/hæz/)
- Past: had (/hæd/)
- Past participle: had (/hæd/)
- say (/seɪ/)
- Present: 3sg says (/sɛz/)
- Past: said (/sɛd/)
- Past participle: said
Common patterns of irregularity in the past tense include:
- Change the vowel to ɔː (the THOUGHT vowel), orthographically represented by ough or augh, e.g.,
- Present bring → Past, past participle brought
- buy → bought
- catch → caught
- seek → sought
- teach → taught
- think → thought
- Change the vowel to oʊ (the GOAT vowel or "long O"), orthographically represented by o with a word-final e, e.g.,
- Present break → Past broke, Past participle broken
- choose → chose, chosen
- freeze → froze, frozen
- speak → spoke, spoken
- steal → stole, stolen
- No change, e.g.,
- Present bet → Past, past participle bet
- bid → bid
- broadcast → broadcast
- burst → burst
- cast → cast
- cost → cost
- cut → cut
- fit → fit (esp. U.S.American EnglishAmerican English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
) - hit → hit
- hurt → hurt
- knit → knit
- let → let
- put → put
- quit → quit / quited → quited
- rid → rid
- set → set
- shed → shed
- shut → shut
- slit → slit
- split → split
- spread → spread
- thrust → thrust
Note that broadcasted is also acceptable as the past participle and past simple of the verb broadcast.
External links
- conjugation.com Conjugation of regular and irregular verbs
- Morphological Classification of the English Irregular Verbs
- Classification of English Irregular Verbs per groups