ФРЕКВЕНТНОСТ УПОТРЕБЕ ЕНГЛЕСКИХ НЕПРАВИЛНИХ ГЛАГОЛА КАО ФАКТОР РЕГУЛАРИЗАЦИЈЕ
THE FREQUENCY OF ENGLISH IRREGULAR VERBS AS A FACTOR OF THEIR REGULARIZATION

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims at testing the traditional hypothesis stating that the higher frequency the word possesses the more is it resistent to alternations. The paper focuses on English irregular verbs. The analysis is conducted on 32 irregular verbs used in both regular and irregular forms of preterite and past participle. Based on the data presented in previous papers, dedicated to English transitioning verbs, the values for probability of each form are obtained. The probability of the occurence (of regular forms) is taken as Y variable and absolute frequency as X variable. Then, the equations for linear regression and the correlation coefficients for these two variables are calculated with Graph Pad Prism 6 statistical software. The results obtained through this analysis do not confirm the traditional hypothesis but they do support the alternative theories which advocate that analogical changes in inflectional system are sporadic in its nature when there are no strong extramorphological forces (e.g. new language contact situations, relevant changes in phonetic system, etc.). In other words, the directions and the outcomes of these analogical changes cannot be predicted.

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