The Nonmorphological Isolation of Strong and Irregular Past Participles: Also a Factor in the Formation of Weak Participles?

Abstract

In German and English, one manifestation of morphological systems in transition is the change of strong and irregular participles to the weak class. Several explanations have already been proposed to account for this migration. This article is an attempt to determine the role of another factor that has yet to receive attention: the nonmorphological isolation of strong and irregular past participles as members of paradigmatic groups. This possibility will be tested by considering a large number of simplex participles which are currently either strong or irregular, or which also have weak variants. Before drawing any final conclusions from the findings, two further issues will be dealt with. The first has to do with the division of labor between the old and new participles, while the second examines the chronology of appearance of weak inflections within strong and irregular verb paradigms