Arnuad, vous êtes clairvoyant
I was just about to ask about the drink, drank drunk
phenomenon
and other such vowel alternations
and why so many irregularities and folk forms
in non-standard US English we have forms such as
dive -dove
fight-fit,
shit, shat
bring, brang brung, also broughten
take, tuck, tooken
help, holp, holpen
and many others, although you often have to go pretty
far up into the mountains to find them
==============
Real languages always are fascinating
because they are mankind caught in the very act
of being mankind.
One truly fascinating thing about the English language
is its stubborn ability to make a "regular irregular" verb
out of any one-syllable verb.
So that English is the only Germanic language
that keeps on **creating** irregular verbs
out of verbs that just should not be irregular at all.
One conspicuous example is "to strive"
allegedly "strive strove striven" in grammars.
This is not an inherited proto-Germanic
"Stark-Verbum" or whatever.
The incredible fact is this verb is actually
a French word "estriver" itself being a Frankish
loan-word out of a Germanic root itself from PIE !!
The English language made a "regular irregular" verb
out of this Germanic > French > middle-English word.
I am not surprised
that English-language native speakers make
strange and innovative apophonic alternations in verbs.
It's a genetic built-in feature of English
that vocalic alternations should be used as
the easiest and most obvious means to express tenses.
Once you grasped this, you can't help tinker with the vowels
in the verbs, whatever the original verb form was.
And I think it's bound to go on as long as English is spoken
by real native speakers.
New verbs will be added to the stock of "regular irregular" verbs.
dive dove
dig dug
are recent creations.
The only question is which is the next verb to join in ?
bring, brang brung, also broughten
looks real gorgeous !
Although tight-lipped people might lose their last tooth
when they hear that *d**n* innovation !
Arnaud
--- "fournet.arnaud" <
fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:
. . .
>
> Some languages still make a use of vocalic schemes :
> What is Modern English drInk drAnk drUnk ?
>
> PIE did and some languages still do.
>
> I suppose you will try to explain
> that apophony is not vocalic schemes...
>
> Arnaud
> ===============