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Article published In: The Mental Lexicon
Vol. 13:1 (2018) ► pp.143–157

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Methodological and analytic considerations

Calculating a pattern’s competitive strength

Competition between /æ/ and /ʌ/ in irregular simple pasts and past participles in English

 | Fryske Akademy | Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
 | Fryske Akademy | Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
 | Fryske Akademy | Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
 | Shenzhen University
Published online: 10 August 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.17019.hoe
Abstract
This article proposes a measure of the competitive strength of two rival patterns in the domain of a subgroup of irregular verbs in English. There is competition between simple pasts built on the vowels /æ/ and /ʌ/, and the same competition is found in the domain of past participles. As a result of such competition, the past tense stang (from sting) was replaced with stung. The /ʌ/ forms are more competitive than the /æ/ forms (Bybee, J. & Slobin, D. (2007) [1982]. Rules and schemas in the Development of the English Past Tense. In J. Bybee (Ed.), Frequency of use and the organization of language (pp. 101–126). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Bybee, J. & Moder, C. (2007) [1983]. Morphological Classes as Natural Categories. In J. Bybee (Ed.) Frequency of use and the organization of language (pp. 127–147). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). To understand this, we counted the number of types for /æ/ (such as sang, rang) and /ʌ/ (such as stung, stuck) in the irregular simple past and did the same in the irregular participle (such as sat, had and sung, done). We calculated a measure of competitiveness for these two patterns incorporating type frequency and token frequency. This measure was used to explain why /ʌ/ forms are more competitive than /æ/ forms.
Article outline
  • 1.Competition and change
  • 2.Empirical evidence showing that the /ʌ/ pattern is more competitive than the /æ/ pattern
    • 2.1Historical evidence
    • 2.2Evidence from dialects
    • 2.3Evidence from errors
  • 3.The calculation of competitive strength
    • 3.1Type frequency and token frequency
    • 3.2A formalisation of the relation between type frequency and token frequency
    • 3.3Calculating the competitive strength of the /æ/ pattern and the /ʌ/ pattern
  • 4.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
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