Re: PS Emphatics

Very informative.

But a little inaccurate on one point: I have never in my life heard anyone
say 'thriven'.

I have heard 'throve' a couple of times but not for a long time; only a
preacher would use it, I think.

It has been 'thrive, thrived' for my lifetime, at least.


Patrick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2008 6:32 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: PS Emphatics


> On 2008-02-02 22:28, fournet.arnaud wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> The easiest and most obvious way of forming the preterite in English is
> the productive one: the -ed suffix. The number of irregular verbs of any
> kind, strong or weak, has been gradually diminishing since OE. For each
> ring/rang/rung (originally weak) or strive/strove/striven there have
> been dozens of strong verbs migrating in the other direction: we have
> baked, helped, glided etc. (all originally strong) not "book, baken",
> "halp, holpen" or "glode, glidden". The "built-in feature" has somehow
> failed to prevent thrive/throve/thriven from becoming a plain
> thrive/thrived verb. Those which have remained irregular are usually
> those that are used relatively often, and those very few that have
> become irregular since OE represent sporadic analogical formations.
> There are also irregularities such as those produced by Verner's Law
> which have never been multiplied by analogy. We no longer have anything
> like OE ce:osan/ce:as/curon/coren; was/were is the sole survival of the
> whole type, still quite well represented in Old and even Middle English.
>
> > 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 ?
>
> Wink/wank? ....... I'll get me coat.
>
> Piotr
>
>
>
>