A Corpus-based Study On The Sociolinguistic Variation Of Past-tense Forms Of English Irregular Verbs

In terms of their inflections of past-tense forms(PTFs),English verbs can be divided into two categories.Verbs which form preterits with suffix-ed,e.g.walk/walked,are the regular verbs and those which do so by changing the stem-vowel are the irregular verbs,e.g.sing/sang.Diachronically speaking,the boundary between the two forms may be quite blurring.For example,regular verbs like help in Modern English were once irregular in Middle English.Synchronically speaking,register may cause the variation of the PTFs of irregular verbs.For example,writers use regular PTFs more frequently in written English in general.In addition,different speakers and writers use PTFs differently.In other words,user-related variables,such as gender,age and social class,may cause PTFs variation as well.For instance,irregular PTFs are more frequently used by younger generations whereas regular PTFs are preferred by elder generations.In a word,English irregular verbs present a trend of change diachronically and they are constrained by certain synchronic factors.Extracting data from COHA and BNCweb and taking the perspective of variationist sociolinguistics,this thesis attempts to investigate diachronic change and synchronic variation of English irregular verbs.In particular,this thesis intends to explore the diachronic trend of English language development,to analyze the underlying reasons and mechanisms as well as to find out factors that may cause synchronic variation.In diachronic research,it collects data from COHA and visualizes the frequency change of PTFs with the help of motion charts.The data leads to a conclusion that irregular verbs present two changing trends,namely regularization and irregularization.In specific,regularization is the major trend whereas irregularization is the minor one.Generally speaking,most irregular verbs present a trend of regularization.They tend to be regularized during the past 200 years under various speeds at different time.Meanwhile,a few verbs display a trend of irregularization.In addition,this thesis attempts to explain the morphological change from the perspective of cognitive analogy.In synchronic research,extracting data from BNCweb,this thesis uses principle components analysis and visualizes the distribution of PTFs across different registers and specific text types.It also investigates how sociolinguistic variables,such as gender,age and social class,cause the variation of irregular verbs PTFs.By quantitative and qualitative analyzing,PTFs show diverse distribution across registers(including specific text types),genders,age groups and social classes in general.For example,the regular patterns appear more frequently in written register and tend to be used more by elder groups and higher social classes while the irregular patterns appear more frequently in spoken register and tend to be used more by younger groups and lower social classes.In speech,female speakers are more frequent users of irregular PTFs than male speakers.In terms of individual irregular verb,distribution varies from verb to verb.In sum,the PTFs of English irregular verbs differ in sociolinguistic distribution.By studying the diachronic and synchronic variation of English irregular verbs,this thesis explores the diachronic trend of English language development and patterns in synchronic use.Theoretically speaking,by examining the irregular verbs,it is helpful and meaningful to explore the language change and the mechanisms.Methodologically speaking,the thesis succeeds in integrating corpus linguistics and quantitative analysis methods with data visualization.Based on corpus data and using visualization tools as well as quantitative analysis methods,it provides an insight into the underlying mechanism behind from the variationist sociolinguistic perspective.Practically speaking,it is valuable for English learners in the future.It may be useful for English learners to find rules to acquire the PTFs of English irregular verbs more efficiently and effectively.