A couple of heards:

[Mark Mandel]

On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 12:31 PM, W Brewer <brewerwa at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> WB: double preterites I might hear/say DelMarVa: <he drownded the kittens
> in the river>; it costed us a fortune; burst(ed) ~ busted (busted a gut
> laughing); knit ~ knitted (knitted me a sweater); sweat ~ sweated (I
> sweat(ed) like a pig); swelled ~ swole ~ swoled (my foot all swoled up);
> stole ~ stoled (I stoled a lot these spellings from Bagby Atwood); tore ~
> tored (he tored a ligament); the train slowly grounded to a halt after
> smashing the stalled school bus at the crossing. Tendency for intrusive [d]
> prevocalically?


Almost all of these verbs have strong preterites, so adding the weak ending
isn't that surprising. I don't see what you're calling prevocalic intrusive
[d]; the only prevocalic [d] in these examples is the second one in
"drownded", which isn't prevocalic till the doubling occurs.

Doublings that avoid a homophony:

   - < strong preterite homophonous with the present/base form. These
   doublings creating an unambiguous preterite, arguably an improvement.
   - costed < pret. cost
      - knitted < pret. knit


   - < strong preterite homophonous with a different verb
   - grounded < pret. of "grind": homophonous with base form of "ground",
      as in "You're grounded!"

Doublings without homophony:

   - < strong preterite
      - swoled < swole
      - stoled < stole


   - < weak preterite:
      - drownded < drowned

Example unclear:

   - ??
   - sweated. I know "sweated" as the only preterite of "sweat", a regular
      verb.  I've never heard "sweat" as preterite; it would be the opposite of
      doubling (preterite halving?), an innovative strong form going
opposite to
      the disambiguating doubling in costed and knitted.

Regards,

Mark Mandel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org