Questions tagged [ablaut]
Systematic variation/gradation of vowels in a word element, reflecting a change in grammatical function (e.g. sing, sang, sung, song).
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Regular vs. irregular verbs
I recall an English teacher explaining that verbs that change vowels during tense changes were called 'regular' and those that added '-ed' in the past tense were 'irregular'. This seemed counter-...
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Strong verbs, weak verbs, and other categories
For verb conjugations, I know that in English we have certain verbs which umlaut ablaut in their principle parts:
sing-sang-sung
We have verbs that add an -ed to the end:
laugh-laughed
and ...
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Is it possible for a new irregular verb to appear in English language?
Consider these verbs in past tense:
faxed, emailed, googled
they are all regular verbs made out of new nouns.
Are there any new irregular verbs that I'm not aware of?
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Why is there no move to introduce regular versions of verb-forms as acceptable alternatives of irregular ones?
The English language has a huge number of irregular verbs(~470). This is significantly more than other languages e.g. French (~130), German (~200)
Irregular verbs make the English language ...
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Past participle of "spit" [closed]
Which is the past participle of spit: spat or spit? And how many examples can we come up with where a verb is changed in the simple past but unchanged(spelt like in the present) in the past participle?...
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Evolution of irregular verbs over the last century
I learned at school that irregular verbs are slowly disappearing from the language: "spelled" is more used than "spelt", "learned" than "learnt", etc. But recently, someone told me that some new ...
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Why do some "ing" verbs change tense to "ung" while others go to "inged?" [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Origin of different past tenses for verbs with the same endings?
Spring has sprung, the bell we had to ring was rung, the sting was stung but when I had to ping a computer it ...
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Would you use the word "swum" these days?
Would you use the word "swum" these days? I mean, grammatically, it is the past participle of the verb "to swim", but it seems to me that no one uses it anymore. If it's the case, how would You ...
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Origin of different past tenses for verbs with the same endings?
Why do we have a situation where the past of "to blow" is "blew", but of "to glow" is "glowed"? And don't say "flew" if you mean "it flowed". The poem Lovers, by Phoebe Cary has many examples of these....
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