The years of UCal budget cuts are working! ("sign-up")

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Dec 7, 2011, at 12:27 PM, Brian Hitchcock wrote, on things like "sign-upped":
>
> Finally, someone (a UCLA alumnus or alumna, no doubt) dared to conjugate
> the faux verb sign-up,  exactly as one logically would if it were a verb,
> without noticing the absurdity thereof! ...

part of this posting is about the spelling of "sign up" the verb and "sign-up" the noun (as separated, hyphenated, or solid), but the point that interests me most is the inflectional forms of these words: is the inflection internal or external?  in standard english, inflection on the verb is internal, on the head, while inflection on the noun is external, at the end; this follows from general principles of english morphology.

so far as i know, the noun always has external inflection.  the verb is another matter, since V+Prt is a unit with V as its head.  that means that inflection goes on the head; it's internal.  but the fact that it's a unit leads people to produce external inflection in many cases.  see my posting on "Externalization of verbal inflection":
  http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/externalization-of-verbal-inflection/
with the examples "double down", "drag ass", "jack off", "piss off", and "man up" (plus, in a comment from Ben Zimmer, "big up" and "voice over").  in a later posting, "re-up":
  http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/re-up

the externalized examples are non-standard, but (in some cases) pretty common.

arnold

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