Introduction

Many languages like English are inflectional in morphing their grammatical categories. English, as well as some other languages, however, does not use only one unified morphological means to mark its important grammatical fields. In modern English, there are three grammatical categories which are morphologically marked by two different forms of inflection, one of which is the majority of the open-class, entirely predictable regulars while the other is the minority of the closed-class, totally unpredictable irregulars. The three grammatical categories are: ① about 180 past-tense or past-participle verbs, as in do-did-done , know-knew-known , which are not formed in accordance with the usual patterns of English regular past-tense and past-participle verbs, as in work-worked-worked ；② plural nouns, which hold a handful of irregulars, as in man-men , child-children , which violate the regular plural endings as in student-students ；and ③ comparatives and superlatives of adjectives as well as adverbs, which keep the few irregulars, as in good-better-best , bad-worse-worst , which are against the regular endings, as in small-smaller-smallest , hard-harder-hardest .

Linguistics concerns with regularity and irregularity that has long covered these questions:

（1）Why does English have two different morphological forms of inflection instead of one since it takes more time and energy to learn them respectively? Where do regulars and irregulars come from respectively? Are languages like English preferably regular or irregular?

（2）What is the nature of regularity and irregularity? By what criteria do we tell regulars from irregulars?

（3）Since regulars and irregulars coexist in certain grammatical fields, what might be the interaction between the two? Do the two always keep constant or changing? Are they mutually affected? Or does one effect upon the other? If they are mutually affected, is there much evidence for new memberships of regulars from irregulars as well as of irregulars from regulars? If not so, which effects upon which? Is the irregular circle being shrunk or vice verse? Can we suppose that the irregular circle is being shrunk by the analogy or generational rules of the heavy majority of regulars?

（4）If regularization is the tendency of irregularity, are irregulars regularized randomly or do they follow certain order? For what reason(s) do they tend to be regularized and what evidence can support the event? For what reason(s) do some irregulars tend to be more easily regularized while some strongly resist regularization? Why do irregulars have to be regularized in certain structures or context while they have to keep irregular in some other structures or situations?

（5）What might be a possible mental process that guides the acquisition of regulars and irregulars? Do the two share the same model or are they processed differently? Are there any ways of testing the hypothetical model?

This book tends to discuss some major questions listed above and attempts to make contributions to the following aspects:

（1）Since globalization of English has given birth to more and more international uses and users of English, the author assumes that regulars are more preferable to irregulars regardless of the user's English proficiency. International users of English might not be so poor at mastery of some most familiar and highly frequently used irregular forms as to carelessly make such mistakes as in take-taked . Global Englishes seem to more conform with regulars than irregulars since global users vary with native users in their acquisition of regulars and irregulars.

（2）Although much evidence from English studies has shown that the regularized tendency of English irregular morphology has gradually resulted in the transition of English irregular forms from the irregular to the regular, the author still hypothesizes that much more evidence from the Internet, which is becoming a more and more important platform where there tends to be more and more global users of English, will modify or challenge the general hypothesis for the remnants of English irregular forms in modern English proposed by Zipf（1935）: among the words characterized with the high frequency of occurrence, the percentage of the old one is much higher than that of the newly coined one. The latter is characterized with the low frequency of occurrence. The higher frequency the word possesses, the more chances it has to secure in the given lexicon, the more resistant it is to alterations. Consequently, the lower frequency of occurrence the word has, the more probable is its loss from the lexicon.

The author finally tends to conclude that the fast global spread of English, especially by means of Internet will quicken its steps of language evolution. Some linguists（Pagel, Atkinson & Meade, 2007）, once tried to track, in the coming centuries, the shift in the regularization of irregular verbs like sink, sting, swim, wring and spring , which unlike most English verbs are made past tense by changing the “i” to “u” instead of adding the usual-ed at the end. So one day in the future we might begin to say that yesterday we sinked, stinged, swimmed, wringed , or springed , instead of sunk, stung, swum, wrung or sprung . If we trace the course of other irregular verbs from hundreds of years ago that have already been regularized, we can begin to estimate how long it will be before these remaining irregular verbs like sinked, springed and the rest become the accepted way to speak. At past rates it will take another 300-2,000 years（39,000 years for the ultimate verbs, “be” and “have”）. But some other linguists（Kelly, 2007）postulated that this timetable is too long. Many historical linguists postulate an original proto-language that fragmented as human beings underwent the diaspora from our point of origin. Sociologists use this theory to track human migration and cultural development. Evolutionary linguists are reviving their field thanks to advances in technology that allow them to model the adaptation of languages. Written language is now changing more rapidly than spoken language, thanks to the Internet and its close relationship with globalization. The English language is morphing as concepts from other languages and cultures are absorbed and spread through online media.