Why is it that English has so many identical verb tenses and forms for the same word? Other languages, like Spanish, have different forms for every tense of a verb. Yet, in English, often all subjunctive forms are identical, the present tense is identical to this and the future (almost), the imperfect and perfect (preterite) tenses are identical….why???
PW,
But on the other hand we do not risk very many inflection errors when trying your language.
Sanskrit is interesting, but I hate the inflection system. Some 700 forms of each verb and lots of cases and declensions. I prefer for example Hindi, which has just five irregular verbs, which are regular too, but in another way. And Chinese, where you do not have to bother with inflections at all! (They have other ways of complicating things.)
Although I cannot quote any actual authority for this besides my quirky memory that found this tidbit fascinating enough to grab hold of (from professor Grant Smith’s Grammar 401 class), English lost most of its inflections when the island was overrun with speakers of different yet similar languages, Old Norse, Old English, Old Frisian, Old German, Old Dutch, Norman French, etc. The root words were the same, but the inflections for gender and tense differed so slightly that they disappeared and English became a word order language rather than an inflected one. Here are the eight inflections remaining:
s- plural
s- possessive
s- second person present tense
ed- past tense
en- past participle
ing- progressive participle
er- comparative
est- superlative
It is interesting to note that the verbs corresponding to be in all languages (at least the ones I have knowledge of: Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Latin, Swedish, Dutch, German, Danish, Czech and Polish) are irregular and anomalous. Maybe that reflects the nature of being, always so complicated and changing.
Brazilian dude
Right now I can’t think of a language which has a regular "to be" verb, but there are some which don’t have one at all - at least in the present tense. e.g. Russian and Hebrew. I don’t know however if it is regular in these languages when it is used (I believe in most other tenses besides the present.) Correct me if I’m wrong.
I think there are languages where the verb doesn’t conjugate, so it is the same for 1st, 2nd, 3rd persons. Perhaps somebody knowledgeable in Japanese can tell me if "desu" is like this.
I just received my monthly copy of the magazine "Illustrated science" (my translation from Swedish). It is interesting (or nice?), but not necessarily accurate at all times.
In this issue, they say that linguists have noticed that the words that survive unchanged the longest are those that we often use. And so "to be" retains an original irregularity, being very common in all (their word!) languages.
They say that "to be" is a regular verb in, for example, Hebrew and Arabic.
In Arabic, a verb like "kaana" is classified as a "weak" verb; in Arabic even "sick". Regular verbs are "healthy". The Biblical Hebrew verb "to be, to become" is classified in the same way. A university textbook even calls it "udda" (odd, unusual). What about Modern Hebrew? The verb seems to be identical to the old one in the dictionary form.
Regarding the theory, earlier posts have already defeated the claim that "all" languages have such a verb, but what do you think of the main theory? Do words change less if we use them often, or are they more prone to attrition and change?
Your remark saved a lot of time for me. I thought that he wanted that I write down my university credentials.
Sitran,
I am at home, and it is not "my Bible", it is 14 different volumes in 9 languages, if I count the Hebrew TaNaK’s as Bibles. And there are more on my hard disk.
If you want to know about Arabic verbs, I will gladly answer all your questions, with some help from my numerous grammars and text books.
well, there seem to be a few of you who do not pay much attention to capitals, so i picked on it to demonstrate that i have a certain interest in languages
actually, it is just some five semesters of semitic languages
What do you know about weak verbs in Arabic?
Go home to your bible!
Sitran
Sitran, I hope he knows you are kidding.
Yes, just joking, but I’m glad to get anders credentials anyway! What a wonderful field you have chosen.
Anyway, about weak verbs in Arabic! There are strong verbs that conjugate rather normally, but don’t weak verbs depend on their conjugations according to the type and placement of the radical that is weak.
So, isn’t a "weak" conjugation an irregular conjugation as opposed to a "strong" conjugation.
Just as in Spanish we have three classes of "o goes to ue" verbs (the so-called "shoe verbs"), although following a specific pattern, they are still called irregular verbs. I guess I think of the weak verbs of Arabic as irregular in that way, as not being "strong."
anders:
In Arabic, a verb like "kaana" is classified as a "weak" verb; in Arabic even "sick". Regular verbs are "healthy". The Biblical Hebrew verb "to be, to become" is classified in the same way. A university textbook even calls it "udda" (odd, unusual). What about Modern Hebrew? The verb seems to be identical to the old one in the dictionary form.
Although I think only "strong" verbs are truly regular, and anything that deviates from that is "sick," "weak," and , therefore, irregular.
But I only took one year of Arabic, so I bow to your authority!
We seem to be of one mind as to weak Semitic verbs being irregular.
But, all of you, may I ask again what you think of the theory I quoted in reply #8? Do words change less if we use them often, or are such words rather more prone to attrition and change?
But, all of you, may I ask again what you think of the theory I quoted in reply #8? Do words change less if we use them often, or are such words rather more prone to attrition and change?
In general, I believe that often-used words are more prone to attrition and change.
The most common verbs are for the most part irregular, where the words of science, religion and philosophy tend to stay regular (if they started out that way), until such a word becomes popular.
But even among the most common words, there are phonetic structures that resist "smoothing" to some extent.
"to be", "to go", "to do", "to have" are the most common verbs in English, all irregular! Note that they are all verbs that are used in complex predicate constructions, and that they form special irregular forms in the negative or the present participle, something other verbs do not tend to do.
"to know","to see" and "to say" show some slight modification, but "to walk" and "to talk" look very regular.
Verbs like "to reconstruct" or "to legitimize" do not show any irregularity.
I am sure that someone can offer more evidence either way!
