A Metalinguistic Character of the “Irregular” Past Tense Forms in English

Elena Even-Simkin 
(Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel)

Abstract: There is only a limited number of Past Tense verb forms such as win-won, cut-cut, think-thought that do not follow the rules of Past Tense /+(e)d/ formation and, thus, today these forms are considered to be irregular in Modern English. However, historically, these forms were part of the productive system in Old English. A sign-oriented phonological analysis of these “irregular” forms uncovers not only the systematic phonological and even iconic quality of the “irregular” Past Tense forms with an Internal Vowel Alternation (IVA), but also reveals the efficiency of the former productive conjugation system of the “irregular” Past Tense in Old English, thus showing that the IVA of the so-called irregular verbs, in fact, is a good example of the result of the efficient communication of human beings. Moreover, the semiotic analysis of the different types of the “irregular” verbs in terms of the theory of phonology/language as human behavior depicts and explains the behavior and cognitive aspects that might have been affected the retention of these so-called irregular forms in Modern English and preserved them from moving to the so-called regular (adding of the suffix +ed/d) Past Tense system.

Key words: communication, “irregular” verbs, past tense, phonology