top of page

Why irregular verbs exist - rjj

VISIT WEBSITE >>>>> http://gg.gg/y83ws?9832054 <<<<<<






And when new verbs are introduced, they're almost always regularly conjugated. It also seems fairly obvious to me that irregular conjugations learnt at an early age will tend to be preserved. For example, in later life, I'm sure I read learned more often than learnt in contexts like the previous sentence, but that hasn't significantly affected my usage. It's important to note that I personally don't feel threatened by the possibility that my use of English might be considered non-standard or uneducated.

Children soon notice how regular verbs work, so they naturally generate "incorrect" past tense forms such as eated, taked, rided. Obviously with less common verbs, firstly the child is less likely to use them, and secondly there's a greater chance that the parents aren't familiar with the "correct" but irregular forms. So they get corrected less often, and with the passage of generations, the irregular forms can gradually die out.

Thus it seems only natural that the most tenaciously-preserved irregular forms will mostly be very common verbs learnt in early childhood.

Old habits die hard , and all that. One answer is that it might be easier to learn verbs where distinct meanings correspond to distinct form, e. The frequent use of these verbs might then act to preserve this association of form and meaning.

Thus it's not surprising that several of the verbs you quote have different roots in different tenses or persons in many European languages. Another deviation from 'regular' morphology would be the verbs that retain a specific form of conjugation that is no longer productive, e. I'm not sure if I would call this pattern irregular though -- maybe their continued survival highlights that the coexistence of several different patterns in the same language is not really a problem but rather a very natural phenomenon.

In general, verbs that tend to be irregular in English are "borrowed" from OE or other languages and have retained elements of their original conjugations. Notice that these verbs are important in the sense that they usually describe common, everyday human activities. I do not know where the regular conjugation we now use comes from. Our brains have evolved to seek patterns, hence children tend to over-regularize; I suspect adults would do the same thing were it not for the rules of grammar.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Why are so many important verbs irregular? Ask Question. Asked 7 years, 11 months ago. Active 7 years, 2 months ago. Viewed 16k times. In many languages, including English, the most important verbs are irregular.

Examples include: to be to do to get to go to have to make The same applies roughly to many other languages I know about Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Swedish and presumably to many other languages too.

Is there any reason why these everyday verbs tend to be irregular? Improve this question. Sherlock Sherlock 4 4 gold badges 9 9 silver badges 24 24 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. So how did went become the past tense for go? The etymology indicates that it probably came from the past tense of wenden. The verb to get has a similar Old English pedigree. Improve this answer. Summary The bottom line is that you either know the irregular verbs because you absorbed them by growing up in an English-speaking country or you have to memorize them, which is a pain.

References 1. Lieberman, E. McWhorter, J. Michel, Jean-Baptiste et al. Gellene, D. Yong, E. Her popular LinkedIn Learning courses help people write better to communicate better. Jump to Navigation. Irregular Verbs. It would be very hard and not really necessary to memorize all of them. You could speak and write perfectly well if you learn just the most commonly used irregular verbs. Nevertheless, if you are curious to see the full list , you can always find it online.

A lot of language learners ask, why do we need all these irregular verbs? They only make things more complicated so why English cannot change their grammar and make all verbs regular? It is a good question, but unfortunately there cannot be a perfect clear answer to it. Langue is a complex unity that exists and evolves together with a society, and the attempts to manage it artificially almost never succeed.

Some elements of grammar and words come and go, and it is connected to the way people use them. However, things cannot disappear from a language, because some grammarians decided so. There will always be opposing points of view. The same way it happened with irregular verbs in English. Practically all English irregular verbs come from Old English or derive from strong Germanic words. Other foreign words that joined English in later times follow the standard —ed pattern.

Naturally, there were discussions among linguists about reforming this part of grammar and getting rid of irregular verbs. However, the opponents of this idea claim that irregular verbs are a historical heritage of English language and it would be a crime to remove those words out of usage. Any language is not only a mean of communication, but it is also a cultural domain of the nation, which shows where the culture came from and how it evolved.

Therefore, irregular verbs have no particular functional purpose. They are just a part of the language, and all the learner can do is to respect the fact and try to learn them.

When you begin learning irregular verbs, you will hear a lot about conjugation. Conjugation is the process of creating changed forms of verbs. Conjugation varies depending on gender, number, tense, mood and other grammar aspects.

However, the conjugation we discuss today is strictly limited to the tense of the verbs. Nevertheless, we will mention the most important ones that you will definitely need in every piece of writing, be it a letter, essay or research paper.

Coincidentally, these verbs are also being very often misused.


Recent Posts

See All

Which karat gold is better - hfa

VISIT WEBSITE >>>>> http://gg.gg/y83ws?8501978 <<<<<< One may see 14k bracelets, earrings, and necklaces as well. Gold jewelry that is...

How should i get taller - zxz

VISIT WEBSITE >>>>> http://gg.gg/y83ws?1329269 <<<<<< It is the fact that good posture does not help you to grow or increase your height...

Sally bercow who is - jfm

VISIT WEBSITE >>>>> http://gg.gg/y83ws?1570302 <<<<<< In the sweet snapshot posted on October 24, the couple can be seen posing...

Kommentare


bottom of page