While perusing ShreevatsaR's answer to this question, it occurred to me that my own verbal usage is out of step with what I see in current American literature. When speaking in the past tense, I prefer to use the following forms:

• dreamt (past tense of to dream)
• leapt (past tense of to leap)
• swept (past tense of to sweep)
• lit (past tense of to light)

However, when reading recently written novels, I see the more regular conjugation of the past tenses, which instead yields dreamed, leaped, sweeped, and lighted. Is it a difference of dialect (US - New England), register (university education), or (possibly) my age (early forties)? I am especially irritated by "lighted" because it takes so much more effort to say than "lit".