“Prognostics of English Verb Paradigm Evolution”

Maria Glushko Voronezh State University, Russia maria_glushko@hotmail.com

“ Strong verbs are disappearing from English, extrapolation points to c.3000 AD as the likely date of almost complete disappearance. ” Whatmough (1956)

1. Introduction.

There exists in linguistics a traditionally sceptic view on the possibility of forecasting the further development of the language. Few isolated attempts were made in this respect, primarily in phonetics and morphology by Polivanov (1957, 1991), Shevoroshkin (1973), Whatmough (1956). The main objectives and methodology of linguistic prognostics were formulated by Kretov (1992,1993).

2. A brief overview of linguistic prognostics at its present stage of development.

Linguistic prognostics employs approaches traditionally used in lexicology, lexicostatistics, mathematic linguistics, linguistic synergetics and corpus linguistics. Kretov (1993) divides linguistic prognostics into three major subfields:

ontognostics, i.e. explication of the unobserved fragments of the language system at its present stage;
futurognostics, i.e. extrapolation of the revealed tendencies of the development of the system into future;
retrognostics, i.e. reconstruction of the past stages of the system.

Both semiotic and functional approaches are employed by linguistic prognostics. Semiotic approach allows to reveal theoretically semantic and grammatical peculiarities of linguistic units. Here I can mention works by Karpilovska (1990), Otsaluk (1993), Palmaitis and Toporov (1984). This approach has been the most productive so far. Less widespread is the functional approach to the language, which allows to trace the dynamics of the functioning of linguistic units and then making conclusions about the future development of the language system. I employed functional approach in my work.

3. A hypothesis.

The general hypothesis for the research is based on the language law discovered and described by G.K. Zipf (1935). It states that among the most frequent words the percentage of old ones is far higher then that of rare or infrequently used words. Yet, the inverse relationship is also true: the more frequently used the word is, the better are its chances to remain unchanged in the language vocabulary, the more stable it is. Correspondingly, the less frequent word is, the fewer chances it has to remain unchanged in the vocabulary. Applying this law to irregular verbs, it has been proposed that irregularity of past simple and past participle verb forms is caused with the high frequency of the verb occurrence. It has also been assumed that the reduction of functional load on the verb leads to its transferring from the category of irregular to the category of regular verbs.

4. Corpus.

Chronological limits of the period considered are from 1500 until 1998. The corpora of research is comprised with 140 books, i.e. appr. 8 mnl words. A choice of texts and constraints imposed will be explained.

5. Sample group.

I studied the dynamics of the functional load on 90 verbs including all their forms. These were:

30 regular verbs;
30 irregular verbs;
30 verbs possessing both regular and irregular conjurgation forms.

The choice of verbs picked for the sample group will be grounded with graphs and tables.

6. Labour saving measures and methodologies.

I made use of the text analyzing program created in Delphi, which provided me with relative frequencies of the units (i.e. the number of occurrences in the text divided by the number of words in the text), as well as Mathematica 4.1 application for graphic representations and processing of the results.

7. Tracing the dynamics.

The dynamics of relative frequency evolution has been studied for each of 90 verbs from the sample group. Afterwards, I divided all frequency of occurrence data into three classes and summed figures, that referred to each year. On receiving graphic representation of dynamics, three linear trends were built, that represent maximally generalized tendencies of evolution of verb classes we are interested in.

8. Conclusion or VS Whatmough.

Unfortunately neither linguistic prognostics has an apparatus in its disposal that would allow extrapolating to c.3000 AD, nor Whatmough provides any grounds for the statement mentioned above. I will show how English verb paradigm will look in a century and prove that not only irregular verb class doesn't disappear, but also the functional load on it increases.

Bibliography

E. A. Karpilovska. Konstruvannya skladnih slovotvorcheskih edinits. Kiiv: Naukova dumka, 1990.

A. A.Kretov. “Nauchnii prognoz v leksicheskoi semantike.” Funktsionalnaya semantika slova. Sverdlovsk: , 1992. 99-110.

A. A. Kretov. “Osnovi leksiko-semanticheskoi prognostiki.” Voronezh, 1993.

S. I.Otsaluk. “Prognozuvannya semantichnoi derivatsii: postanovka problemi.” Materiali mezhdunarodnoi naukovoi konferentsii "Semantika movi tekstu". Ivano-Frankivsk: , 1993. 231-232.

M. L.Palmaitis V. N.Toporov. “Ot rekonstruktsii staroprusskogo do rekriatsii novoprusskogo.” Balto-slavyanskie issledovaniya. Moskva: Nauka, 36-63.

E. D.Polivanov. “Foneticheskie konvergentsii.” Voprosi yazikoznaniya. 1957. 3: 77-83.

V. V.Shevoroshkin. “Distributivnaya fonetika russkogo yazika v sravnitel'no tipologicheskom aspekte.” Problemi strukturnoi lingvistiki. Moskva: Nauka, 1973. 575-585.

J. Whatmough. Language. A modern Synthesis. London: Secher and Warburg, 1956.

G. K. Zipf. The Psycho-Biology of Language. Cambridge, Mass.: , 1935.