Re: Re: stridden

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Mar 16, 2004, at 6:12 PM, Doug Wilson wrote:

> How does one explain "dive/dove/dived"? [not my paradigm BTW]

apparently a simple question.  but the answer is interestingly complex.
  [if i were going to have a gravestone, something very much like that
last sentence would have  to be engraved on it.]

the simple answer would be that this is as in stride/strode/strided --
a heteroclite pattern (mixing forms from different paradigms) that is
possible but very unlikely.  what would be required is an irregular
past, plus a past participle that regularizes not according to the most
easily available generalization (the past/pastparticiple
generalization), but all the way back to the pattern of fully regular
verbs (in defiance of the past/pastparticiple generalization), in which
the past participle has the d-suffix.

doug wilson notes that dive/dove/dived isn't his paradigm.  it is,
however, pretty well attested in the u.s.  it isn't my paradigm,
either, but it almost could be.  in contrast, stride/strode/strided
just sounds weird to me, and though i don't doubt that it's attested
for a few speakers, it has nothing like the currency of dive/dove/dived
in the u.s.

in addition, while stride/strode/strode is not infrequent,
dive/dove/dove is (i think) quite rare.

why would there be an asymmetry between the two cases?

the answer lies in history.  stride/strode goes way back, but dive/dove
is (i recall from sources on the subject) a relatively recent
item-by-item analogy (presumably to drive/drove) that replaced the
perfectly regular dive/dived for some (mostly u.s.) speakers.  (the
MWDEU entry for "dove" is quite entertaining.)  so the past participle
"dived" is a relic, maintained in the face of a minor analogy that
replaced the older past tense "dived".

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)