Why do We Have Irregular Verbs?

english September 20, 2020

Have you ever noticed that the most frequent verbs of our vocabulary are irregular verbs?

When children or a second language learner is acquiring English knowledge, they may commit common mistakes, such as in the example below:

The child above chose "eated", "telled" instead of "ate" and "told", that is, misapplying the rule of the -ed suffix. It is fundamental to have in mind that, instead of a bad English performance, that means that the user understood the simple past and it is using their knowledge to communicate using logic.

This unconscious choice is called “Analogy”, that is, the appliance of a grammatical pattern intending regularity, even if it is not the rule set for that word. A lot of irregular verbs switched to regular patterns due to analogy. Yes, it is way more logical to apply -ed to every verb, but if so why do we still have irregular verbs?

Many irregular verbs derive from Proto-Germanic language – that it is also related to Proto-Indo-European – more specifically, from the Germanic Strong Verbs (CHAMONIKOLASOVÁ, 2014, p. 17), which are verbs that suffer the Great Vowel Shift (ablaut), for example: sing – sang – sung (it changes the root vowel). It is interesting to notice that while some irregular verbs are relatively simple (sit - sat), others may be considered "creative" (seek - sought). However, even when a grammatical rule was disused, some verbs kept the old form (being creative or not). Check the words below:

IRREGULAR VERBS: bear, beat, beget, bite, blow, break, choose, cleave, draw, drive, eat, fall, fly, forbid, forget, forsake, freeze, give, grow, know, lie, ride, see, shake, shear, slay, smite, speak, steal, stride, strive, swear, take, tear, throw, tread, wake, weave, and write (WIKIPEDIA)

Oppositely, the regular verbs (preterites and past participles ending in -ed) follows the Germanic Weak Conjugation that was for about ¾ of Old English Verbs (CHAMONIKOLASOVÁ, 2015, p. 30). Initially, the weak conjugation involved -t or –d (dental suffix), but it has developed to add the –ed suffix at the end of verbs in preterites and past participles. Yet, there are a few irregular verbs that partially follows the weak conjugation, for example:

SPELL: spelled - spelt.

Well, looks like that the child is not wrong, but playing a major role in language: using the grammatical rules at the same time that is changing it. In short,