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Odin
Supreme Genius
Joined: Oct 13, 2006
Age: 23
Posts: 2092
Location: Moorhead, Minnesota, USA
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 Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 12:28 am Post subject: Autism/AS and accidentally regularizing irregular verbs. |
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I have noticed recently that I seem to have a tendency to accidentally regularize many irregular verbs a lot more often then other people do. I'll say "flied", "choosed", "catched" "throwed", "teached", "freezed" "sweeped", "costed", "beated" , hurted, shutted, etc.
Anyone else have this problem?
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Nightsun
Deinonychus
Joined: Sep 24, 2009
Age: 27
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Location: Rome - Italy
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| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 4:27 am Post subject: |
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I do it always. I just hate irregulars, why they exist?
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zena4
Phoenix
Joined: Jan 31, 2009
Posts: 2126
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| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 5:29 am Post subject: |
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Yes, sometimes. But I have a good excuse! 
(English is not my first language.) |
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ruveyn
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 22, 2008
Age: 73
Posts: 4795
Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 6:55 am Post subject: |
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| Nightsun wrote: | | I do it always. I just hate irregulars, why they exist? |
I like irregular constructions. They make the language more interesting.
ruveyn |
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Ambivalence
Phoenix
Joined: Nov 09, 2008
Posts: 614
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| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 7:43 am Post subject: |
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| Nightsun wrote: | | I do it always. I just hate irregulars, why they exist? |
I guess that the additional difference in the sound helps distinguish the words when they are spoken; "cry" and "fly" are quite similar, but "cried" and "flew" are quite different and less likely to be confused than "cried" and "flied" would be. For a limited number of common words, this could be very useful in spoken language.
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sinsboldly
Free Range Aspie
Joined: Nov 22, 2006
Age: 59
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Location: Oregon, USA
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| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:23 am Post subject: |
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I have always been grateful for not having to learn how to speak English. My mother said I was singing commercial jingles and talking like a radio DJ or news broadcaster from my cradle.
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mgran
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Joined: May 23, 2009
Posts: 662
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| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:52 am Post subject: |
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Not in English or Irish. In other European languages though. Russian is a good one, only twelve irregular verbs. Yay! I do it with irregular nouns in some European languages though.
Why can't all languages be like mandarin though, and dispense with the bother of endings?
The reason why we have irregulars is because those are the words in most common use. The verb to be, for example, is always irregular, since it is the most common one.
English irregular usage is compounded by the fact it's been so heavily influenced by other languages. Also, humans are lazy, and this is why languages tend to become less precise and "accurate" over time. Compare Classical Greek to Koine, to Modern Greek. It's amazing the loss of subtlety and gradations of meaning over time. Another few thousand years like this, we'll all be grunting at each other, and scratching our bottoms to communicate meaning.  |
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Odin
Supreme Genius
Joined: Oct 13, 2006
Age: 23
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Location: Moorhead, Minnesota, USA
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| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:00 am Post subject: |
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| Nightsun wrote: | | I do it always. I just hate irregulars, why they exist? |
Depends on the particular irregular verb. "to be" is derived from what was originally 3 different verbs, which is why it is so wonky. The stem-changing or "strong" verbs (sing-sang-sung) are relics of an older kind of marking verbs for past tense by vowel change found in Proto-Indo-European. Others are the result of idiosyncratic sound changes and contractions (haved, maked --> had, made)
the -ed ending originated when Proto-Germanic borrowed a huge number of words from speakers of a long-gone non-Indo-European language. these words would not have had the vowel change and so "did" was used as a helper verb to mark past tense, this became the regular past tense ending of the Germanic languages, including English.
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Odin
Supreme Genius
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| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:09 am Post subject: |
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| mgran wrote: |
Why can't all languages be like mandarin though, and dispense with the bother of endings? |
because the grammatical words used instead eventually become slurred into new endings. Helper verbs become tense, mood, and voice endings. prepositions become case endings.
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UrchinStar47
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Joined: Feb 24, 2009
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| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 3:20 pm Post subject: |
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| I haven't noticed it with my English. Most irregular verbs seem to have a rule onto themselves in the background, that I know intuitively. English is a very simple language, really. |
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fiddlerpianist
Unclassified and loving it!
Joined: May 01, 2009
Age: 32
Posts: 1556
Location: The Autistic Hinterlands
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| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 4:56 pm Post subject: |
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| ruveyn wrote: | | Nightsun wrote: | | I do it always. I just hate irregulars, why they exist? |
I like irregular constructions. They make the language more interesting. |
Yes! Actually, I go out of my way to make regular constructions follow the exception. Example: one Starbucks, two Starbices. One spouse, two spice. It makes everyday conversation far more interesting.
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Ambivalence
Phoenix
Joined: Nov 09, 2008
Posts: 614
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| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 4:58 pm Post subject: |
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| mgran wrote: | | English irregular usage is compounded by the fact it's been so heavily influenced by other languages. Also, humans are lazy, and this is why languages tend to become less precise and "accurate" over time. Compare Classical Greek to Koine, to Modern Greek. It's amazing the loss of subtlety and gradations of meaning over time. Another few thousand years like this, we'll all be grunting at each other, and scratching our bottoms to communicate meaning. |
I disagree. It's like watching a costume drama, with actors speaking in those stupid stilted diction voices at each other; "oh, Mister Darcy, I should be terribly obliged if you would pass to me the salt cellar" - did anyone ever really speak like that? Probably. Did more than a comparatively tiny proportion of posh twits really speak like that? I doubt it (and I bet they didn't keep it up in bed  ). We ordinary underlings of any time have always spoke proper like! 
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Callista
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| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 5:15 pm Post subject: |
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This is interesting--these sorts of errors are what occur in NT language development around the ages of two and three, after they have learned grammar rules but before the exceptions.
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Rocky
Toucan
Joined: May 02, 2008
Posts: 254
Location: In the third dimension.
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| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 6:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Ambivalence wrote: | | mgran wrote: | | English irregular usage is compounded by the fact it's been so heavily influenced by other languages. Also, humans are lazy, and this is why languages tend to become less precise and "accurate" over time. Compare Classical Greek to Koine, to Modern Greek. It's amazing the loss of subtlety and gradations of meaning over time. Another few thousand years like this, we'll all be grunting at each other, and scratching our bottoms to communicate meaning. |
I disagree. It's like watching a costume drama, with actors speaking in those stupid stilted diction voices at each other; "oh, Mister Darcy, I should be terribly obliged if you would pass to me the salt cellar" - did anyone ever really speak like that? Probably. Did more than a comparatively tiny proportion of posh twits really speak like that? I doubt it (and I bet they didn't keep it up in bed ). We ordinary underlings of any time have always spoke proper like! |
It has been said that many aspies use overly formal language. I would guess that would be due to reading a lot vs talking a lot. Written language tends to be more formal. Once I learned the rules of grammar and Standard English, I used to follow those rules, while writing or speaking. I have since learned to shift gears depending on the person I was talking to and the situation.
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Skilpadde
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Joined: Dec 08, 2008
Age: 32
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Location: Norway
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| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 6:58 pm Post subject: |
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| zena4 wrote: | | Yes, sometimes. (English is not my first language.) |
Nor mine, so sometimes I make mistakes.
I never ever do these in Norwegian, though. On the contrary, I am the one who grinds my teeth and almost gets a seizure when I hear or read them mistreated like that. "Flied", "cutted".... Aaarrrrgghh!
Even from journalists and authors.
It's a shame that no-one seems to be editing anymore. Give it a few more years and one will probably have to misspell words when searching for something! 
I really don't think this has anything to do with autism or AS. On the contrary, Aspies are supposed to have fairly high verbal IQ. |
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