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Irregularity is called so in contrast with regularity. If all linguistic forms are regular morphologically and phonologically, there are by no means irregulars by the name. But it is not otherwise true that all linguistic forms are irregular. Irregularity does not exist in every grammatical category. In modern English, irregularity lies in three grammatical fields: irregular markings of plural nouns, past-tense and past-participle verbs, and comparatives and superlatives of adjectives and adverbs, among which they are all in the minority.
The majority of English countable nouns are regular and predictable in the spelling of the plural form by adding -s to the end of the singular form or -es to those singulars that end in a sibilant sound（/s/, /z/, /ts/, /dz/）. However, there are several nouns which are irregular in their spelling. These nouns are exceptions when it comes to making them plural. When irregular nouns become plural, their spellings change in different ways or they may not change at all from singular forms. Some nouns that end in -f or -fe are changed to -ves in the plural, as in calf-calves, half-halves . Some nouns change the vowel sound in becoming plural as in foot-feet, goose-geese, louse-lice, man-men, mouse-mice, tooth-teeth, woman-women . Some Old English plurals are still in use, as in child-children, ox-oxen . Some nouns ending in -o take -s as the plural, while others take -es: auto-autos, echo-echoes . Some nouns do not change at all: deer-deer, offspring-offspring . Some nouns retain foreign plurals: criterion-criteria . Other irregular plurals retain from different languages: tempo-tempi （Italian）, schema-schemata （Greek）. More can be found in Appendix I.
The English language has a large number of irregular verbs. In the great majority of these, the past participle and/or past tense is not formed according to the usual patterns of English regular verbs. Other parts of the verb—such as the present 3rd person singular -s or -es, and present participle -ing—may still be formed regularly.
Among the exceptions are the verb to be and certain defective verbs, which cannot be conjugated into certain tenses.
Most English irregular verbs are native, originating in Old English（an exception being “catch” from Old North French “cachier”）. They also tend to be the most commonly used verbs. The ten most commonly used verbs in English are all irregular.
In general, English contains about 180 “irregular” verbs that form their past tense in idiosyncratic ways, such as ring-rang , sing-sang , go-went , and think-thought . In contrast with the regulars, the irregulars are unpredictable. The past tense of sink is sank , but the past tense of slink is not slank but slunk ; the past tense of think is neither thank nor thunk but thought , and the past tense of blink is neither blank nor blunk nor blought but regular blinked . Also in contrast to the regulars, “irregular verbs define a closed class: there are about 180 of them in present-day English, and there have been no recent new ones”（Pinker, 1999: 5）. And they have a corresponding advantage compared with the regulars: there are no phonologically unwieldy forms such as edited ; all irregulars are monosyllables（or prefixed monosyllables such as become and overtake ）that follow that canonical sound pattern for simple English words. For instance, the past tense of T-forms include: burnt , clapt , crept , dealt , dreamt , dwelt , felt , leant , leapt , learnt , meant , spelt , smelt , spilt , spoilt , stript , vext . T-forms can be divided into two categories: those with a vowel change and those without a vowel change. T-forms with a vowel change include: crept , dealt , dreamt , felt , leapt , meant . The T-forms with a vowel change are still very common in modern English. In fact, crept , dealt , felt and meant are the only accepted forms. In the case of dreamt and leapt , although dreamt and leapt are still quite common and acceptable in both written and spoken English, the regular forms dreamed and leaped seem to be more popular in modern usage. T-forms without a vowel change include: burnt , clapt , dwelt , leant , learnt , spelt , smelt , spilt , spoilt , stript , vext . The T-forms without a vowel change are slowly disappearing from the language. Dwelt is the only form in this category which is more frequently used than the regular -ed form. Burnt , leant and learnt are still relatively common in spoken English and fairly common in written English. Spelt , smelt , spilt and spoilt are quickly disappearing. Stript , clapt and vext are rarely used in contemporary English.
The regular way to make comparative or superlative adjectives is to add -er or -est to the end of bare adjectives or adverbs, or to use the peripheral form of more or most before. A small number of adjectives, however, are irregular and some of these can be regular or irregular. The most important ones are listed in Table 1.1:
Table 1.1 Irregular comparatives and superlatives of adjectives and adverbs
Etymology of English irregular forms tends to answer the question where do irregulars come from. As a language, English is derived from the Anglo-Saxon, a West Germanic variety, although its current vocabulary includes words from many languages. The Anglo-Saxon roots can be seen in the similarity of numbers in English and German, particularly
seven/sieben
,
eight/acht
,
nine/neun
and
ten/zehn
. Pronouns are also cognate:
I/ich
;
thou/du
;
we/wir
;
she/sie
. However, language change has eroded many grammatical elements, such as the noun case system, which is greatly simplified in Modern English; and certain elements of vocabulary, much of which is borrowed from French. Though more than half of the words in English either come from the French language or have a French cognate, most of the common words used are still of Germanic origin
.
When the Normans conquered England in 1066, they brought their Norman language with them. During the Anglo-Norman period, which united insular and continental territories, the ruling class spoke Anglo-Norman, while the peasants spoke the English of the time. Anglo-Norman was the conduit for the introduction of French into England, aided by the circulation of Langue d'oïl literature from France. This led to many paired words of French and English origin. For example, beef is cognate with modern French bœuf , meaning cow ; veal with veau , meaning calf ; pork with porc , meaning pig ; and poultry with poulet , meaning chicken . In this situation, the foodstuff has the Norman name, and the animal the Anglo-Saxon name, since it was the Norman rulers who ate meat（meat was an expensive commodity and could rarely be afforded by the Anglo-Saxons）, and the Anglo-Saxons who farmed the animals.
English words of more than two syllables are likely to come from French, often with modified terminations. For example, the French words for syllable , modified , terminations and example are syllabe , modifié , terminaisons and exemple . In many cases, the English form of the word is more conservative（that is, has changed less）than its French form.
English has proven accommodating to words from many languages. Scientific terminology relies heavily on words of Latin and Greek origin. Spanish has contributed many words, particularly in the southwestern United States. Examples include buckaroo from vaquero or “ cowboy ”, alligator from el lagarto or“ the lizard ”, and rodeo . Cuddle , eerie and greed come from Scots; honcho , sushi and tsunami from Japanese; dim sum , gung ho , kowtow , kumquat , ketchup , and typhoon from Cantonese Chinese; behemoth , hallelujah , Satan , jubilee and rabbi from Hebrew; taiga , sable and sputnik from Russian; cornea , algorithm , cotton , hazard , muslin , jar , sofa and mosque from Arabic; kampong and amok from Malay; and boondocks from the Tagalog word bundok .
Accordingly, English irregular forms are derived from several sources of languages and their irregular forms have been long preserved during the evolution of language.
Old English contained about twice as many irregular verbs as Modern English, including now obsolete forms such as cleave-clove , crow-crew , abide-abode , childe-chid , and geld-gelt . Bybee（1985）examined the current frequencies of the surviving descendants of the irregulars in Old English and found that it was the low-frequency verbs that were converted to regular forms over the centuries.
Today one can actually feel the psychological cause of this historical change by considering past tense forms that are low in frequency. Most low-frequency irregulars sound stilted or strange, such as smite-smote, slay-slew, bid-bade, spell-spelt , and tread-trod （in American English）, and one can predict that they will eventually go the way of chid and crew . In some cases, a form is familiar enough to block the regular version, but not quite familiar enough to sound natural, and speakers are left with no clear choice for that slot in the conjugational paradigm. For example, many speakers report that neither of the past participle forms for stride , strided and stridden , sounds quite right. In contrast, low-frequency regular past tense forms always sound perfectly natural（or at least no more unnatural than the stems themselves）. No one has trouble with the preterite or participle of abate-abated , abrogate-abrogated , and so on.
Most irregular verbs exist as remnants of historical conjugation systems. What is today an exception actually followed a set, normal rule long ago. When that rule fell into disuse, some verbs kept the old conjugation. An example of this is the word kept , which before the Great Vowel Shift fell into a class of words where the vowel in keep（then pronounced kehp）was shortened in the past tense. Similar words, such as peep , that arose after the Vowel Shift, use the regular-ed suffix. Groups of irregular verbs include: The remaining strong verbs, which display the vowel shift called ablaut and sometimes have a past participle in -en or -n: e. g., ride/rode/ridden . This verb group was inherited from the parent Proto-Germanic language, and ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European language, and was originally an entirely regular system. In Old English and in modern German it is still more or less regular, but in modern English the system of strong verb classes has almost entirely collapsed.
Weak verbs that have been subjected to sound changes over the course of the history of English that has rendered them irregular acquired a long vowel in the present stem, but kept a short vowel in the preterite and past participle, e. g., hear/heard/heard .
Weak verbs that show the vowel shift are sometimes called “Rückumlaut” in the present tense, e. g., think/thought .
Weak verbs that end in a final -t or -d that made the addition of the weak suffix -ed seem redundant, e. g., cost/cost/cost .
There is a handful of surviving preterite present verbs. These can be distinguished from the rest because their third person simple present singular（the he, she , or it form）does not take a final -s. These are the remnants of what was once a fairly large Indo-European class of verbs that were conjugated in the preterite or perfect tense with present tense meaning. All of the surviving verbs of this class are modal verbs, that is, a class of auxiliary verbs or quasi-auxiliaries, e. g., can/could/could .
Verbs that contain suppletive forms form one or more of their tenses from an entirely different root. Be is one of these, as in go/went/gone （where went is originally from the verb to wend）. By the 15th century in southern England, wende （wend）had become synonymous with go , but its infinitive and present tense forms had ceased to be in frequent use. With a waning, morphing preterite tense（yode）, go was ripe to receive a new preterite—the preterite of wende , the familiar went . （Online Etymology Dictionary）
Other verbs have been changed due to ease of pronunciation so that it is shorter or more closely corresponds to how it is spelt.
Some weak verbs have been the subject of contractions, e. g., have/had/had .
There are fewer strong verbs and irregular verbs in Modern English than there are in Old English. Slowly over time the number of irregular verbs is decreasing. The force of analogy tends to reduce the number of irregular verbs over time. This fact explains the reason that irregular verbs tend to be the most commonly used ones; verbs that are more rarely heard are more likely to switch to being regular. For instance, a verb like ablate was once irregular, but today ablated is the standard usage. Today irregular and standard forms often coexist, a sign that the irregular form may be on the wane. For instance, seeing spelled instead of spelt or strived instead of strove is common.
On the other hand, contraction and sound changes can increase their number. Most of the strong verbs were regular, in that they fell into a conventional plan of conjugation in Old English; there are so few of them left in contemporary English that they seem irregular to us.
Loanwords are words adopted by the speakers of one language from a different language（the source language）. A loanword can also be called a borrowing. The abstract noun borrowing refers to the process of speakers adopting words from a source language into their native language.
English has many loanwords, due to England coming in contacts with numerous invaders in the Middle Ages, and English becoming a trade language in the 18th century. Today the traces of loanwords in English can be easily found particularly in the English irregular plurals since a significant number of irregular plurals are borrowed from other cultures. For instance, words from Latin that end in -a change -a to -ae（e. g., formula becomes formulae in the mathematical and chemical senses）; words from Greek that end in -ma change -ma to -mata（e. g., stigma becomes stigmata in all senses but the sense of “disgrace”）; words from French that end in -u add an x（e. g., chateau becomes chateaux ）; words from Hebrew that add -im or -ot（e. g., cherub becomes cherubim ）; etc.