Abstract
Human languages are rule governed, but almost invariably these rules have exceptions in the form of irregularities. Since rules in language are efficient and productive, the persistence of irregularity is an anomaly. How does irregularity linger in the face of internal (endogenous) and external (exogenous) pressures to conform to a rule? Here we address this problem by taking a detailed look at simple past tense verbs in the Corpus of Historical American English. The data show that the language is open, with many new verbs entering. At the same time, existing verbs might tend to regularize or irregularize as a consequence of internal dynamics, but overall, the amount of irregularity sustained by the language stays roughly constant over time. Despite continuous vocabulary growth, and presumably, an attendant increase in expressive power, there is no corresponding growth in irregularity. We analyze the set of irregulars, showing they may adhere to a set of minority rules, allowing for increased stability of irregularity over time. These findings contribute to the debate on how language systems become rule governed, and how and why they sustain exceptions to rules, providing insight into the interplay between the emergence and maintenance of rules and exceptions in language.
Highlights
Language is a continuously evolving system, subject to constant pressures to enhance expressivity while guaranteeing successful communication over time
Language is an open system with many different processes acting simultaneously to characterize its dynamics
Despite the growth of the number of types, the total number of irregular types stays largely constant over time, with a considerable and consistent percentage of tokens being irregular past tense forms, due to the irregularity and stability of the most frequent verbs
Summary
Language is a continuously evolving system, subject to constant pressures to enhance expressivity while guaranteeing successful communication over time. Whitney [1], one of the earliest American English lexicographers, highlighted that language can be seen as a open system subject both to conservative and alterative forces. In this view, language is a living system continuously experiencing birth, growth, decay, and death. Language changes as a result of external or exogenous pressures, but is subject to internal or endogenous pressures. Endogenous factors are related to inner instabilities of languages leading to changes independent of external disturbances: for instance, in phonology, pressure against ambiguity makes sounds maximally contrastive to decrease the likelihood of misunderstanding [2,3]. An exogenous influx of non-native speakers into a language has been correlated with decreased morphological complexity [7]
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