Abstract
This chapter discusses various theoretical approaches to both English and German irregular verb morphology. It outlines commonalities and differences between these approaches’ attempts to capture patterns and paradigmatic relationships. Section 2.1 is on English irregular verb morphology and briefly summarises early theoretical accounts, followed by a comprehensive analysis of the verbal paradigm from a current perspective. This analysis focusses on inflectional patterns and classes as well as challenging exceptions and idiosyncrasies. Section 2.2 looks at German irregular verb morphology, providing an in-depth analysis of this verbal paradigm. The chapter closes with an illustration of a minimalist morphology example.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Aarts, B. (2004). Modelling linguistic gradience. Studies in Language, 28(1), 1–49. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.28.1.02aar
Albright, A. (2009). Modeling analogy as probabilistic grammar. In J. Blevins & J. Blevins (Eds.), Analogy in grammar: Form and acquisition (pp. 185–213). Oxford University Press.
Albright, A., & Hayes, B. (2003). Rules vs. analogy in English past tenses: A computational/experimental study. Cognition, 90(2), 119–161. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(03)00146-X
Anderson, S. R. (1988). Morphological theory. In F. J. Newmeyer (Ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge survey. Vol. I. Linguistic theory: Foundations (pp. 146–191). Cambridge University Press.
Augst, G. (1975). Untersuchungen zum Morpheminventar der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Gunter Narr.
Bendjaballah, S. (2000). The negative preterite in Kabyle Berber. Folia Linguistica, 34(3–4), 185–224. https://doi.org/10.1515/flin.2000.34.3-4.185
Biber, D., & Reppen, R. (2002). What does frequency have to do with grammar teaching? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24(2), 199–208. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263102002024
Bittner, A. (1985). Wie schwach sind die starken Verben? Überlegungen und Vorschläge zu einer Klassifizierung der neuhochdeutschen Verben. In W. U. Wurzel (Ed.), Studien zur Morphologie und Phonologie I. Studia Grammatica 21 (pp. 51–74). Akademie Verlag.
Bittner, A. (1996). Starke ‚schwache’ Verben, schwache ‚starke’ Verben. Deutsche Verbflexion und Natürlichkeit. Stauffenburg.
Bloomer, R. (1994). System-congruity and the participles of modern German and modern English. A study in natural morphology. Buske Verlag.
Bybee, J. (1995). Regular morphology and the lexicon. Language and Cognitive Processes, 10(5), 425–455. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690969508407111
Bybee, J. (2001). Phonology and language use. Cambridge University Press.
Bybee, J., & Moder, C. L. (1983). Morphological classes as natural categories. Language, 59(2), 251–270. https://doi.org/10.2307/413574
Bybee, J., & Newman, J. (1995). Are stem changes as natural as affixes? Linguistics, 33(4), 633–654. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1995.33.4.633
Bybee, J., & Slobin, D. I. (1982). Rules and schemas in the development and use of the English past tense. Language, 58, 265–289. https://doi.org/10.2307/414099
Carrol, R., Svare, R., & Salmons, J. (2012). Quantifying the evolutionary dynamics of German verbs. Journal of Historical Linguistics, 2(2), 153–172. https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.2.2.01car
Chomsky, N., & Halle, M. (1968). The sound pattern of English. Harper & Row.
Clahsen, H. (1997). The representation of German participles in the German mental lexicon: Evidence for the dual-mechanism model. In G. Booij & J. v. Marle (Eds.), Yearbook of morphology 1996 (pp. 73–96). Kluwer Academic.
Clahsen, H. (1999). Lexical entries and rules of language: A multidisciplinary study of German inflection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(6), 991–1060. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X99002228
Clahsen, H., Eisenbeiss, S., Hadler, M., & Sonnenstuhl, I. (2001). The mental representation of inflected words: An experimental study of adjectives and verbs in German. Language, 77(3), 510–543. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2001.0140
Clahsen, H., Eisenbeiss, S., & Sonnenstuhl-Henning, I. (1997). Morphological structure and the processing of inflected words. Theoretical Linguistics, 23, 201–249. https://doi.org/10.1515/thli.1997.23.3.201
Clahsen, H., Hadler, M., & Weyerts, H. (2004). Speeded production of inflected words in children and adults. Journal Child Language, 31(3), 683–712. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000904006506
Clahsen, H., & Rothweiler, M. (1993). Inflectional rules in children’s grammars: Evidence from German participles. In G. Booij & J. van Marle (Eds.), Yearbook of morphology 1992 (pp. 1–34). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3710-4_1
Cuskley, C., Colaiori, F., Castellano, C., Loreto, V., Pugliese, M., & Tria, F. (2015). The adoption of linguistic rules in native and non-native speakers: Evidence from a wug task. Journal of Memory and Language, 84, 205–223. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2015.06.005
Depraetere, I., & Langford, C. (2020). Advanced English grammar. A linguistic approach (2nd ed.). Bloomsbury Academic.
Dressler, W. U. (1986). Explanation in natural morphology, illustrated with comparative and agent-noun formation. Linguistics, 24, 519–548. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1986.24.3.519
Even-Simkin, E., & Tobin, Y. (2013). The regularity of the ‘irregular’ verbs and nouns in English. John Benjamins.
Fabricius-Hansen, C. (1977). Zur Klassifizierung der starken Verben im Neuhochdeutschen. Deutsche Sprache, 5, 193–205.
Fleischhauer, E. (2013). Morphological processing in children. An experimental study of German past participles (Doctoral dissertation). Faculty of Human Sciences, the University of Potsdam. Publication portal of University of Potsdam. https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/opus4-ubp/frontdoor/index/index/year/2014/docId/6807
Gerber, P. (2022). Verb stem alternation in Gongduk. Synchronic and diachronic analysis. Language and Linguistics, 23(2), 240–273. https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00105.ger
Gries, S. T., & Ellis, N. C. (2015). Statistical measures for usage-based linguistics. Language Learning, 65(S1), 228–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12119
Halle, M. (1953). The German conjugation. Word, 9(1), 45–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1953.11659455
Hempe, U. (1988). Die starken Verben im Deutschen und Niederländischen. Diachrone Morphologie. Niemeyer.
Henzen, W. (1965). Deutsche Wortbildung. Niemeyer.
Hoard, J., & Sloat, C. (1973). English irregular verbs. Language, 49(1), 107–120. https://doi.org/10.2307/412105
Hock, D. (1968). Die Klassifizierung der starken Verben in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Deutsch als Fremdsprache, 5, 219–221.
Hockett, C. F. (1954). Two models of grammatical description. Word, 10(2–3), 210–234. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1954.11659524
Jespersen, O. (1942). A modern English grammar on historical principles. Part IV: Morphology. Munksgaard.
Juilland, A., & Macris, J. (1973). The English verb system. Mouton de Gruyter.
Kielar, A., Joanisse, M. F., & Hare, M. L. (2008). Priming English past tense verbs: Rules or statistics? Journal of Memory and Language, 58(2), 327–346. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2007.10.002
Koch, E. M., Bulté, B., Housen, A., & Godfroid, A. (2023). The predictive processing of number information in subregular verb morphology in a first and second language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1017/S014271642300022X
Köpcke, K. M. (1998). Prototypisch starke und schwache Verben in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Sonderheft Germanistische Linguistik, 141–142, 45–60.
Kuryłowicz, J. (1956). L’apophonie en Indo-Européen. Polska Academia Nauk.
Ladd, D. R., Remijsen, B., & Manyang, C. A. (2009). On the distinction between regular and irregular inflectional morphology: Evidence from Dinka. Language, 85(3), 659–670. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0136
Lieberman, E., Michel, J. B., Jackson, J., Tang, T., & Nowak, M. A. (2007). Quantifying the evolutionary dynamics of language. Nature, 449(7163), 713–716. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06137
Lück, M., Hahne, A., & Clahsen, H. (2006). Brain potentials to morphologically complex words during listening. Brain Research, 1077, 144–152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2006.01.030
Mailhammer, R. (2007). The Germanic strong verbs: Foundation and development of a new system. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 183. de Gruyter.
Marcus, G. F., Brinkmann, U., Clahsen, H., Wiese, R., & Pinker, S. (1995). German inflection: The exception that proves the rule. Cognitive Psychology, 29(3), 189–256.
Marslen-Wilson, W., & Tyler, L. K. (1998). Rules, representations, and the English past tense. Trends in Cognitive Science, 2(11), 428–435. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1364-6613(98)01239-x
Marusch, T., von der Malsbur, T., Bastiaanse, R., & Burchert, F. (2012). Tense morphology in German agrammatism. The production of regular, irregular and mixed verbs. The Mental Lexicon, 7(3), 351–380. https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.7.3.05mar
Marzi, C., & Pirrelli, V. (2022). Psycholinguistic research on inflectional morphology in the Romance languages. In Oxford research encyclopaedia of linguistics. Retrieved May 10, 2023, from https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-709
Matthews, P. H. (1991). Morphology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Meunier, F., & Marslen-Wilson, W. (2004). Regularity and irregularity in French verbal inflection. Language and Cognitive Processes, 19(4), 561–580. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690960344000279
Milin, P., Filipović Đurđević, D., del Prado, M., & Martín, F. (2009). The simultaneous effects of inflectional paradigms and classes on lexical recognition: Evidence from Serbian. Journal of Memory and Language, 60(1), 50–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2008.08.007
Nübling, D., Dammel, A., Duke, J., & Szczepaniak, R. (2006). Historische Sprachwissenschaft des Deutschen: Eine Einführung in die Prinzipien des Sprachwandels. Gunter Narr.
Olatoye, T. (2022). Irregular verb morphology in Nigerian English. World Englishes, 41(3), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/weng.12595
Paul, H. (1917). Deutsche Grammatik (Vol. 2). Niemeyer.
Penke, M., Wimmer, E., Hennies, J., Hess, M., & Rothweiler, M. (2014). Inflectional morphology in German hearing-impaired children. Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology, 41(1), 9–26. https://doi.org/10.3109/14015439.2014.940382
Peters, P. (2009). Irregular verbs. Regularization and ongoing variability. In P. Peters, P. Collins, & A. Smith (Eds.), Comparative studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and beyond. Varieties of English around the world (pp. 13–30). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g39.02pet
Pickl, S. (2023). (High) German. In Oxford research encyclopaedia of linguistics. Retrieved May 10, 2023, from https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-939
Pinker, S. (1991). Rules of language. Science, 253(5019), 530–534. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1857983
Pinker, S. (1999). Words and rules. The ingredients of language. Phoenix.
Pinker, S., & Prince, A. (1988). On language and connectionism. Analysis of parallel distributed processing of language acquisition. In S. Pinker & J. Mehler (Eds.), Connections and symbols (pp. 73–193). MIT Press.
Prasada, S., & Pinker, S. (1993). Generalization of regular and irregular morphological patterns. Language and Cognitive Processes, 8, 1–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/0169096930840694
Pyles, T., & Algeo, J. (1992). The origins and development of the English language (4th ed.). Harcourt Brace.
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1988). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. Longman.
Regel, S., Opitz, A., Müller, G., & Friederici, A. D. (2015). The past tense debate revisited: Electrophysiological evidence for subregularities of irregular verb inflection. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27(9), 1870–1885. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00818
Ruoff, A. (1981). Häufigkeitswörterbuch gesprochener Sprache. Niemeyer.
Russell, P. (2017). The evolution of Celtic. In J. Klein, B. Joseph, & M. Fritz (Eds.), Handbook of comparative and historical Indo-European linguistics: An international handbook (Vol. 2, pp. 1274–1297). Mouton De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110523874-028
Ségéral, P., & Scheer, T. (1998). A generalized theory of ablaut: The case of modern German strong verbs. In R. Fabri, A. Ortmann, & T. Parodi (Eds.), Models of inflection (pp. 28–59). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110919745.28
Smolka, E., Khader, P. H., Wiese, R., Zwitserlood, P., & Rösler, F. (2013). Electrophysiological evidence for the continuous processing of linguistic categories of regular and irregular verb inflection in German. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25(8), 1284–1304. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00384
Smolka, E., Zwitserlood, P., & Rösler, F. (2007). Stem access in regular and irregular inflections: Evidence from German principles. Journal of Memory and Language, 57, 325–347. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2007.04.005
Smolka, E., Zwitserlood, P., Wiese, R., Marslen-Wilson, W., & Rösler, F. (2018, revision). Priming effects of German participles—The past-tense debate is not over yet. Manuscript in preparation.
Strobach, T., & Schönpflug, U. (2011). Can a connectionist model explain the processing of regularly and irregularly inflected words in German as L1 and L2? International Journal of Bilingualism, 15(4), 446–465. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006911403205
Trompelt, H. (2010). Production of regular and non-regular verbs. Evidence for a lexical entry complexity account. Spektrum Patholinguistik Schriften (Vol. 2). Universitätsverlag Potsdam.
Trompelt, H., Bordag, D., & Pechmann, T. (2013). (Ir)Regularity of verbs revisited: Evidence for lexical entry complexity. The Mental Lexicon, 8(1), 26–52. https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.8.1.02tro
Vennemann, T. (2000). Zur Entstehung des Germanischen. Sprachwissenschaft, 25, 233–269.
Wagner, T. (2010). Interlanguage morphology. Irregular verbs in the mental lexicon of German-English interlanguage speakers. Narr-Francke-Attempto.
Weyerts, H., & Clahsen, H. (1994). Netzwerke und symbolische Regeln im Spracherwerb: experimentelle Ergebnisse zur Entwicklung der Flexionsmorphologie. Linguistische Berichte, 154, 430–460.
Wiese, R. (1996). Phonological versus morphological rules. On German ablaut and umlaut. Journal of Linguistics, 32(1), 113–135. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226700000785
Wiese, R. (2000). The phonology of German. Oxford University Press.
Wiese, B. (2008). Form and function of verbal ablaut in contemporary standard German. In R. Sackmann (Ed.), Explorations in integrational linguistics. Four essays on German, French, and Guaraní. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 285 (pp. 97–151). John Benjamins.
Wunderlich, D. (1996). Minimalist morphology: The role of paradigms. In G. Booij & J. van Marle (Eds.), Yearbook of morphology 1995 (pp. 93–114). Kluwer Academic.
Wurzel, W. U. (1970). Studien zur deutschen Lautstruktur. Studia Grammatica 8. Akademie Verlag.
Wurzel, W. U. (1984). Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. Akademie-Verlag.
Xu, F., & Pinker, S. (1995). Weird past tense forms. Journal of Child Language, 22(2), 531–556. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900009946
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wagner, T. (2023). Irregular Verb Morphology: Theoretical Accounts. In: English Interlanguage Morphology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-50617-8_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-50617-8_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-50616-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-50617-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)