Re: Re: subject-verb agreement - stridden

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Mar 11, 2004, at 12:14 PM, Steve Boatti wrote:

> A very amusing discussion. I can't help wondering, if "ride" begat
> "ridden",
> why can't "stride" beget "stridden?"

well, obviously it can; the dictionaries that list "stridden" as the
past participle presumably have citations for this form.  i never
denied that *some* people have "stridden"; i merely claimed that a
great many have a paradigm gap here.  (i see that the Cambridge Grammar
lists "stridden" with a question mark.)

so the question is: why doesn't analogy work here?  the answer is
complex, but it depends on the observation that some analogies are
hugely more likely than others.  the analogies normally tap into the
morphological regularities of the language.

why isn't the past participle "strided"?  the answer is that past tense
forms are much more frequent than past participle forms, and that -ed
past participles are almost without exception simply identical to the
pasts.  so you're going to hear past "strode" before (and more
frequently than) any past participle for "stride" that you might hear,
and once you've registered "strode" as the past, "strided" is no longer
available as the past participle.  (but if you hear enough instances of
"strided" as a *past tense* form, then "strided" as past participle
becomes possible.)

once you've registered "strode" as the past tense form, there are then
four possible analogies giving a past participle:

1.  pple = past + n: stroden (cf. weave - wove - woven)
2.  pple = pres + n: striden (cf. take - took - taken)
3.  pple = ablaut past: strode (cf. find - found - found)
4.  pple = special stem + n: stridden (cf. drive - drove - driven)

the first three of these have relatively few exemplars, and no exemplar
with /ay/ in the present and /o/ in the past (like "stride" -
"strode").  only the fourth has any legs, and it rests on just four
verbs with any great frequency: drive, ride, rise, write.  (note that
all of these have /r/ before the /ay/, and that three of the four have
an alveolar obstruent after it.  so "stride" fits well into this
class.)

so, given the system of english morphology, what you'd *like* to go for
is
   (a) stride - strided - strided
but once you've learned "strode" you have to go for some irregular
pattern.  the best of these is pattern 4 ("stridden"):
   (b) stride - strode - stridden
but you might easily not have extracted a mini-pattern for these few
verbs; if you haven't, you have nowhere to go:
   (c) stride - strode - GAP.

("stroden", "striden", and "strode" are not impossible, just very very
unlikely.)

the larger point is that people do in fact live with paradigm gaps.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)