Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine

National Technical University of Ukraine «Kiev Polytechnic Institute»

Faculty of Linguistics

Department of Theory, Practice and Translation of English

ABSTRACT

on the topic:

«Origin of modern irregular verbs»

Made by:

Galyshych Marta

Group LE-43

Checked by:

Makeeva K. S.

Kyiv – 2016

Contents

Introduction …………………………………………….………………….	3
1. Development ……………………………………………………….........	4
2. Groups …………………………………………………………………..	5
2.1 Strong verbs ………………………………………………...……..	5
2.2 Weak verbs ……………………..……………………….………...	7
2.3 Anomalous cases …………………………………………….……	10
3. History of irregular verbs in English ………………………………....	11
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………	13
References ……………………………………………………………….	14

Introduction

The English language has a large number of irregular verbs, approaching 200 in normal use—and significantly more if prefixed forms are counted. In most cases, the irregularity concerns the past tense (also called preterite) or the past participle.

The irregular verbs include many of the most common verbs: the dozen most frequently used English verbs are all irregular. New verbs usually follow the regular inflection.

Irregular verbs in Modern English typically derive from verbs that followed more regular patterns at a previous stage in the history of the language. In particular, many such verbs derive from Germanic strong verbs, which make many of their inflected forms through vowel gradation, as can be observed in Modern English patterns such as sing–sang–sung. The regular verbs, on the other hand, with their preterites and past participles ending in -ed, follow the weak conjugation, which originally involved adding a dental consonant (-t or -d). Nonetheless, there are also many irregular verbs that follow or partially follow the weak conjugation.

1. Development

Most English irregular verbs are native, derived from verbs that existed in Old English. Nearly all verbs that have been borrowed into the language at a later stage have defaulted to the regular conjugation. There are a few exceptions, however, such as the verb catch (derived from Old Northern French cachier), whose irregular forms originated by way of analogy with native verbs such as teach.

Most irregular verbs exist as remnants of historical conjugation systems. When some grammatical rule became changed or disused, some verbs kept to the old pattern. For example, before the Great Vowel Shift, the verb keep (then pronounced "kehp") belonged to a group of verbs whose vowel was shortened in the past tense; this pattern is preserved in the modern past tense kept (similarly crept, wept, leapt, left). Verbs such as peep, which have similar form but arose after the Vowel Shift, take the regular -ed ending.

The force of analogy tends to reduce the number of irregular verbs over time, as irregular verbs switch to regular conjugation patterns (for instance, the verb chide once had the irregular past tense chid, but this has given way to the regular formation chided). This is more likely to occur with less common verbs; hence it is often the more common verbs (such as be, have, take) that tend to remain irregular. Many verbs today have coexisting irregular and regular forms, a sign that the irregular form might be on the wane.

In a few cases, however, analogy has operated in the other direction (a verb's irregular forms arose by analogy with existing irregular verbs). This is the case with the example of catch given above; others include wear and string, which were originally weak verbs, but came to be conjugated like the similar sounding strong verbs bear and swing.

The verb forms described in this article are chiefly those that are accepted in standard English; many regional dialects have different irregular forms.