The American Language
Wake woke woken
Wear wore wore
Weep wep wep
Wet wet wet
Win won (or wan)[39] won (or wan)
Wind wound wound
Wish (wisht) wisht wisht
Wring wrung wrang
Write written wrote
[Pg198]
A glance at these conjugations is sufficient to show several general
tendencies, some of them going back, in their essence, to the earliest
days of the English language. The most obvious is that leading to the
transfer of verbs from the so-called strong conjugation to the weak--a
change already in operation before the Norman Conquest, and very
marked during the Middle English period. Chaucer used /growed/ for
/grew/ in the prologue to "The Wife of Bath's Tale," and /rised/ for
/rose/ and /smited/ for /smote/ are in John Purvey's edition of the
Bible, /circa/ 1385.[40] Many of these transformations were afterward
abandoned, but a large number survived, for example, /climbed/ for
/clomb/ as the preterite of /to climb/, and /melted/ for /molt/ as the
preterite of /to melt/. Others showed themselves during the early part
of the Modern English period. /Comed/ as the perfect participle of /to
come/ and /digged/ as the preterite of /to dig/ are both in
Shakespeare, and the latter is also in Milton and in the Authorized
Version of the Bible. This tendency went furthest, of course, in the
vulgar speech, and it has been embalmed in the English dialects. /I
seen/ and /I knowed/, for example, are common to many of them. But
during the seventeenth century it seems to have been arrested, and
even to have given way to a contrary tendency--that is, toward strong
conjugations. The English of Ireland, which preserves many seventeenth
century forms, shows this plainly. /Ped/ for /paid/, /gother/ for
/gathered/, and /ruz/ for /raised/ are still in use there, and Joyce
says flatly that the Irish, "retaining the old English custom [/i. e./,
the custom of the period of Cromwell's invasion, /circa/ 1650],
have a leaning toward the strong inflection."[41] Certain verb forms
of the American colonial period, now reduced to the estate of
localisms, are also probably survivors of the seventeenth century.
"The three great causes of change in language," says Sayce, "may be
briefly described as (1) imitation or analogy, (2) a wish to be clear
and emphatic, and (3) laziness. Indeed, if we choose to go deep enough
we might reduce all three causes to the general one of laziness, since
it is easier to imitate than to say [Pg199] something new."[42] This
tendency to take well-worn paths, paradoxically enough, is responsible
both for the transfer of verbs from the strong to the weak declension,
and for the transfer of certain others from the weak to the strong. A
verb in everyday use tends almost inevitably to pull less familiar
verbs with it, whether it be strong or weak. Thus /fed/ as the
preterite of /to feed/ and /led/ as the preterite of /to lead/ paved
the way for /pled/ as the preterite of /to plead/, and /rode/ as
plainly performed the same office for /glode/, and /rung/ for /brung/,
and /drove/ for /dove/ and /hove/, and /stole/ for /dole/, and /won/
for /skun/. Moreover, a familiar verb, itself acquiring a faulty
inflection, may fasten a similar inflection upon another verb of like
sound. Thus /het/, as the preterite of /to heat/, no doubt owes its
existence to the example of /et/, the vulgar preterite of /to eat/. So
far the irregular verbs. The same combination of laziness and
imitativeness works toward the regularization of certain verbs that
are historically irregular. In addition, of course, there is the fact
that regularization is itself intrinsically simplification--that it
makes the language easier. One sees the antagonistic pull of the two
influences in the case of verbs ending in /-ow/. The analogy of /knew/
suggests /snew/ as the preterite of /to snow/, and it is sometimes
encountered in the American vulgate. But the analogy of /snowed/ also
suggests /knowed/, and the superior regularity of the form is enough
to overcome the greater influence of /knew/ as a more familiar word
than /snowed/. Thus /snew/ grows rare and is in decay, but /knowed/
shows vigor, and so do /growed/ and /throwed/. The substitution of
/heerd/ for /heard/ also presents a case of logic and convenience
supporting analogy. The form is suggested by /steered/, /feared/ and
/cheered/, but its main advantage lies in the fact that it gets rid of
a vowel change, always an impediment to easy speech. Here, as in the
contrary direction, one barbarism breeds another. Thus /taken/, as the
preterite of /to take/, has undoubtedly helped to make preterites of
two other perfects, /shaken/ and /forsaken/.
But in the presence of two exactly contrary tendencies, the one in
accordance with the general movement of the language [Pg200] since
the Norman Conquest and the other opposed to it, it is unsafe, of
course, to attempt any very positive generalizations. All one may
exhibit with safety is a general habit of treating the verb
conveniently. Now and then, disregarding grammatical tendencies, it is
possible to discern what appear to be logical causes for verb
phenomena. That /lit/ is preferred to /lighted/ and /hung/ to /hanged/
is probably the result of an aversion to fine distinctions, and
perhaps, more fundamentally, to the passive. Again, the use of /found/
as the preterite of /to fine/ is obviously due to an ignorant
confusion of /fine/ and /find/, due to the wearing off of /-d/ in
/find/, and that of /lit/ as the preterite of /to alight/ to a
confusion of /alight/ and /light/. Yet again, the use of /tread/ as
its own preterite in place of /trod/ is probably the consequence of a
vague feeling that a verb ending with /d/ is already of preterite
form. /Shed/ exhibits the same process. Both are given a logical
standing by such preterites as /bled/, /fed/, /fled/, /led/, /read/,
/dead/ and /spread/. But here, once more, it is hazardous to lay down
laws, for /shredded/, /headed/, /dreaded/, /threaded/ and /breaded/ at
once come to mind. In other cases it is still more difficult to
account for preterites in common use. /Drug/ is wholly illogical, and
so are /clum/ and /friz/. Neither, fortunately, has yet supplanted the
more intelligible form of its verb, and so it is not necessary to
speculate about them. As for /crew/, it is archaic English surviving
in American, and it was formed, perhaps, by analogy with /knew/, which
has succumbed in American to /knowed/.
Some of the verbs of the vulgate show the end products of language
movements that go back to the Anglo-Saxon period, and even beyond.
There is, for example, the disappearance of the final /t/ in such
words as /crep/, /slep/, /lep/, /swep/ and /wep/. Most of these, in
Anglo-Saxon, were strong verbs. The preterite of /to sleep/
(/slâepan/), for example, was /slēp/, and that of /to weep/ was
/weop/. But in the course of time both /to sleep/ and /to weep/
acquired weak preterite endings, the first becoming /slâepte/ and the
second /wepte/. This weak conjugation was itself degenerated.
Originally, the inflectional suffix had been /-de/ or /-ede/ and in
some cases /-ode/, and the vowels were always pronounced. The wearing
down process that set in in the twelfth century disposed [Pg201] of
the final /e/, but in certain words the other vowel survived for a
good while, and we still observe it in such archaisms as /belovéd/.
Finally, however, it became silent in other preterites, and /loved/,
for example, began to be pronounced (and often written) as a word of
one syllable: /lov'd/.[43] This final /d/-sound now fell upon
difficulties of its own. After certain consonants it was hard to
pronounce clearly, and so the sonant was changed into the easier surd,
and such words as /pushed/ and /clipped/ became, in ordinary
conversation, /pusht/ and /clipt/. In other verbs the /t/-sound had
come in long before, with the degenerated weak ending, and when the
final /e/ was dropped their stem vowels tended to change. Thus arose
such forms as /slept/. In vulgar American another step is taken, and
the suffix is dropped altogether. Thus, by a circuitous route, verbs
originally strong, and for many centuries hovering between the two
conjugations, have eventually become strong again.
The case of /helt/ is probably an example of change by false analogy.
During the thirteenth century, according to Sweet,[44] "/d/ was
changed to /t/ in the weak preterites of verbs [ending] in /rd/, /ld/
and /nd/." Before that time the preterite of /sende/ (/send/) had been
/sende/; now it became /sente/. It survives in our modern /sent/, and
the same process is also revealed in /built/, /girt/, /lent/, /rent/
and /bent/. The popular speech, disregarding the fact that /to hold/
is a strong verb, arrives at /helt/ by imitation. In the case of
/tole/, which I almost always hear in place of /told/, there is a
leaping of steps. The /d/ is got rid of without any transitional use
of /t/. So also, perhaps, in /swole/, which is fast displacing
/swelled/. /Attackted/ and /drownded/ seem to be examples of an effort
to dispose of harsh combinations by a contrary process. Both are very
old in English. /Boughten/ and /dreampt/ [Pg202] present greater
difficulties. Lounsbury says that /boughten/ probably originated in
the Northern [/i. e./, Lowland Scotch] dialect of English, "which ...
inclined to retain the full form of the past participle," and even to
add its termination "to words to which it did not properly
belong."[45] I record /dreampt/ without attempting to account for it.
I have repeatedly heard a distinct /p/-sound in the word.
The general tendency toward regularization is well exhibited by the
new verbs that come into the language constantly. Practically all of
them show the weak conjugation, for example, /to phone/, /to bluff/,
/to rubber-neck/, /to ante/, /to bunt/, /to wireless/, /to insurge/
and /to loop-the-loop/. Even when a compound has as its last member a
verb ordinarily strong, it remains weak itself. Thus the preterite of
/to joy-ride/ is not /joy-rode/, nor even /joy-ridden/, but
/joy-rided/. And thus /bust/, from /burst/, is regular and its
preterite is /busted/, though /burst/ is irregular and its preterite
is the verb itself unchanged. The same tendency toward regularity is
shown by the verbs of the /kneel/-class. They are strong in English,
but tend to become weak in colloquial American. Thus the preterite of
/to kneel/, despite the example of /to sleep/ and its analogues, is
not /knel'/, nor even /knelt/, but /kneeled/. I have even heard
/feeled/ as the preterite of /to feel/, as in "I /feeled/ my way,"
though here /felt/ still persists. /To spread/ also tends to become
weak, as in "he /spreaded/ a piece of bread." And /to peep/ remains
so, despite the example of /to leap/. The confusion between the
inflections of /to lie/ and those of /to lay/ extends to the higher
reaches of spoken American, and so does that between /lend/ and
/loan/. The proper inflections of /to lend/ are often given to /to
loan/, and so /leaned/ becomes /lent/, as in "I /lent/ on the
counter." In the same way /to set/ has almost completely superseded
/to sit/, and the preterite of the former, /set/, is used in place of
/sat/. But the perfect participle (which is also the disused
preterite) of /to sit/ has survived, as in "I have /sat/ there." /To
speed/ and /to shoe/ have become regular, not only because of the
general tendency toward the weak conjugation, but also for logical