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[pic] Simple Past Tense for Irregular Verbs: Where’s the exact rule' PROJECT PAPER Student’s Name : Siti Nurhafizah Binti Mohd Noor Matric No : TGB100016 Date of Submission : 15th April 2010 Subject Course : TXGA 6103 General Linguistics CONTENT Pages Abstract 1 Introduction 2 Methodology 4 Problem Statement 5 Analysis 7 Summary and Conclusion 9 References 10 Appendixes Abstract This study is conducted by selecting and compiling the regular and irregular past tense verbs found in the dictionary. There were 50 verbs taken for the study. The verbs were later analyzed and determined for its pattern. The verbs taken were transformed into simple past tense forms. Later on, it was observed that the regular verbs were written easily into past tense form, which is by adding –ed at the end of the word. Meanwhile, for irregular verbs, the past tense form change in a different way. The changes were confusing and if we take a look at the pattern of the changes, the rule for it is all over the place. Thus, the patterns are divided into six categories relating to the sound of the words. From the data, the reliable conclusion was made that there is no specific rule in changing the simple past tense form for the irregular verbs. In advance, the possibilities of these patterns made could be use in forming the rule of simple past tense for irregular verbs in the English language. Introduction According to Matthew Mak (--) in his note book titled English Grammar, Past Tense verb is used for an action that has already taken place. This means that the action has already happened in the past event. Since we were young, we were introduced to so many words in school and some words are confusing. When you learn English Language, for example, especially if you are not the native speaker of the language, you will find that words are new and it is difficult to speak them in a proper way or even write them. According to Brown (2000, p. 5), language is a complex, specialized skill, which develop in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently. I remember during my school year, I only learned English language better when I was twelve years old. At that age, I began to take pleasure in mumbling words in English even though sometimes I did not know what they mean. I remember I was watching “The X-Files” and the words that I picked up quickly at that time was “Shut up!”, “Freeze!”, “Get out!” and “Put your hands up!”. Somehow, from those little words, I began to slowly follow other complicated words that English has in its vocabulary and I still think of how did I learn those words and what are the rules that I can remember I did to actually say them correctly' Now, I remember that I forgot the rules. I just learn from what I heard and make rules out of it by guessing, looking at the patterns involved in those words that are formed. In the case of changing the verb into a past tense form in English, it is possible to be that way. Past tense in English can be a confusing rule, for someone who starts learning the language. As you can see, most verbs in past tense forms are put –ed at the final of the word and sometimes can also be put –ied, -d, or even change forms differently. The theory of putting –ed, -d, or –ied at the final letter is what made for regular verbs. For example, a verb “play” became “played” in simple past tense form, “fry” became “fried”, and “hear” became “heard”. However, verbs such as “fly”, “sing”, “break”, “catch” and others, the changes are different. The verb “fly” became “flew”, “sing” became “sang”, “break” became “broke” and “catch” became “caught”. From these examples, how can we differentiate them and what is the rule that can make for these environments' If we say “fly”, the rule of forming the simple past tense form for it is by deleting ‘-y’ at the final letter and adding ‘-ew’ to become “flew”; then, it should be for the verb “cry”, the indicating rule should be applied the same. Both words, on the other hands involved liquid sound /r/ and /l/ and both ended with ‘-y’. However, this is not the applicable rule for the verb as the past tense form for “cry” is “cried”. Somehow, the rule for regular past tense verb, “cry”, “fry”, and “try” is the same. Just look at the patterns. The three words ended with ‘-y’ and the three verbs includes ‘-r-’ in the middle. With that question raised, I believe that this research is the fundamental experiment to see the importance of the rules to be exact and not based on something that is not certain and all over the place, as what I exemplified just now. Methodology The methods that are used in this study are the compilation of verbs taken from Oxford Dictionary ( ). The verbs are listed and categorized into seven components. The example is shown in the Appendix section of the paper and also the table below. Two elements were used in order to study the words produced by the students which are by looking through the rule of phonetics and morphology. The words are analyzed based on the sound of the words produced and the types of sounds produced by the words in order to make categorization out of them. The second elements in linguistic features that can be used to study the analysis is the morphology. Some inflectional morphemes are identified in the study. This is regarding the suffix such as ‘–ew’, and the affix such as ‘ – a –‘. Thus, the element is discussed and explained when analyzing the words. Those words were divided into seven categories: the /eu/ sound, the /ae/ sound, the /o/ sound, the /t/ sound, un-change category, 3 letter words and others. Problem Statement As a primary school teacher myself, I have noticed a lot of grammatical errors made by my students in school. Thus, this study was conducted to see the pattern of grammatical rule in linguistic aspect, most probably deal with morphology, inflectional morpheme to be exact. It also gives some opportunities for teachers to highlight some important points about how to teach children better English where both linguistic features - phonetics and morphology can play their roles in par. The study is mainly about the morphology features, which is the simple past tense form for irregular verb (function words), to be specific. The word “swim” or “swam” is a function word. The affix of ‘a’ in the middle is actually the inflectional morpheme. Inflectional morpheme means bound morphemes that have a strictly grammatical function (Fromkin, Rodman and Nina, 2011, p. 50). Here, the affix ‘a’ expresses the changes of the action which is to indicate whether the action is present or past. In this paper, the inflectional morpheme, and the suffix or affix of ‘ –ew’, ‘-lt’, ‘-nt’, ‘-pt’ and etc. is analyzed and categorized in order to find out the patterns evolved in those verbs, irregular verbs. From the patterns achieved, the rule can be made and the learning of English can be easy. Analysis From the data that have been collected, there are many words that formed in a confusing way. There are five words ended with ‘–ew’, ten verbs that take ‘a’ and deleting some other letters in a word, eleven verbs that take ‘o’ and deleting other letters in a word, four words that take ‘–aught’ or ‘-ought’ and deleting some letters in a word, two verbs that do not change its form and three verbs that became three letter words only. |Category |No. |Verbs (simple present tense) |No. |Verbs (Simple Past Tense) | |/eu/ |1 |grow |1 |grew | | |2 |draw |2 | | | |3 |Fly |3 | | | |4 |blow |4 | | | |5 |throw |5 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Table 1 To analyze those sentences, we need to look back at the rules of syntax. English is a language that is full with rules. In English, according to Fromkin, Rodman and Nina (2011, p. 78), English is a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language. Sentence (i) indicated that the auxiliary verb “is” is not supposed to be in the sentences as the sentence can just stand up without it – “The lions fierce the animal” . Sentence (ii), (iii), (iv), (vi) and (v) goes the same with sentence (i), except that Sentence (iii), which the auxiliary verb “are” needs to be omitted and the suffix –s in the word “lives” is not needed in the sentence as well. Sentence (vi) and (vii), as we can see the start of a sentence must be in capital letter. That goes with the rule of punctuation. Thus, a letter “t” in “the” must be written in capital “T”. This data shows that there are frequent errors regarding the use of auxiliary verbs “is” and “are”. As we all know, the auxiliary “is” indicate the singular verb, while “are” is the plural verb. In syntax rule, singular auxiliary verb must take a singular subject, and a plural auxiliary verb, on the hands, must take a plural subject. For example, in the sentence, Elephants are huge animals. The word “Elephants” is a subject, “are” is a verb, and “huge animals” is the compliment of direct object. Thus, here, the process of SVO exists. In other word, “Elephants” is a plural subject. So, what comes after it' A definitely plural auxiliary verb “are”. In the case of other errors, there are some data that proposed the misuse of preposition such as “at”, “on” and “in”. When the preposition is written incorrectly, the meaning of the sentences could also go wrong. For example, Bats live at the caves. This sentence shows that the preposition used is not suitable because the preposition “at” is usually used to show a general location, for example, “at the school”, which is very general where the school actually has other rooms as well which are the classroom, the office, the staff room. But, in this case, the preposition “in” is much more suitable with the situation in the sentence because “in” tells us that the location is specific and a close area and not general and open like the preposition “at”. In the case of the article errors, the students often produce the article “a” or “the” when there is no need to write them out. For example in sentence, like, The elephants are a huge animals. In the sentence above, the article “a” is written. The “a” can be omitted because “huge animals” is a plural object. Thus, “a” is not appropriate in the sentence because “a” indicate something that is singular. From all of the data gathered, I think the students are still blurred or is not well equipped with singular and plural nouns as well as verbs because most of the errors made are mainly about singular and plural subject or object and verbs where the two aspect are linked somehow in the rule of syntax. Summary and Conclusion The pattern observed in the students writing errors is consistent with the rule of syntax. The teaching of syntactic rule towards the students can be a crucial thing for teachers, especially the primary school teachers. As you can see, human learn language adequately when they are at their young age. The brain of a child is not yet fixed like adult so they can learn language better than adults. This is supports by McDaniel, McKee and Garrett (2009), the working memory that supports various aspects of cognition is thought to increase during development. According to Fromkin, Rodman and Nina (2011, p. 22), a child is introduced to language virtually at the moment of birth. In the critical-age hypothesis, language is biologically based and the ability to learn a native language develops within a fixed period, from birth to middle childhood. The rule of syntax in term of singular and plural subject or object as well as verb needs to be taught properly. Thus, the rule of Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) is important in order to teach the children for them to write correctly in the language. When they speak the language, on the other hands, the meaning of the things being spoken become much more important than the syntactic structure of the words because the words to be heard by someone that we speak to are meant to be understood. However, when we write something, the sentences that we produce must be clearly written with proper grammar. Otherwise, the meaning that we tried to express would be misinterpreted. However, as clearly stated by Mackie and Dockrell (2004), writing is a complex skill involving a number of linguistic and nonlinguistic processes. Thus, a research on that needs to be done as well. As we learn through the process, we can write better and produce better sentences in the future. In this case, it is very important for a child to be good in his or her writing so that it will be useful for them in the examination. Then, when they leave the school, they can write better English in the future which we all know that the world is in English nowadays which means that English Language is important for us to acquire in order to get better opportunities in job application and many other things as well. The lack of grammar in children’s writing worries the world of English language not just the second language learner of the language but the native speakers as well. Thus, we need to identify which part of the grammar that the children mostly abundant and confused. We need to provide more activities about English that can contribute to the grammar skills needed. Maybe, in the next study can be done to find out the ways to enhance students’ writing basically on singular and plural subject or object as well as verb. And, we need to consider other factors as well that contributes to the errors made. As in Rispoli (2005), it is stated that the incident of error can be minimized if the child does not attempt to perform more ambitiously than they have the capacity to perform. Reference Fromkin, V., Rodman. R. & Hyams, N. (2011). An Introduction to Language (9th Ed.).United States: Wadsworth Cengage Learning Moon, J. (2005).Children Learning Language.United Kingdom: Macmillan Books Brown, H.D. (2000).Principles of Language Learning and Teaching(4th Ed.).New York: Pearson Education. Rispoli, M. (2005). When Children reach beyond their grasp: why some children make pronoun ase errors and others don’t. Journal of Child Language 32, 93-116. McDaniel, D.,McKee, C. & Garrett, M.F. (2009). Children’s sentence planning: Syntactic correlates of fluency variations. Journal of child Language 37, 59-94. Mackie, C. & Dockrell J. E. (2004). The Nature of Written Language Deficits in Children With SLI. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47, 1469-1483. APPENDIX 1 The Auxiliary Verb Error : 1. The fish are swims in the water. 2. The lions is fierce in the animal. 3. The elephants is huge animals. 4. Animals is live at the forest. 5. Lions is fierce an animal. 6. Elephants is huge an animals. 7. Bats is live at the caves The Punctuation Error: 1. the fish are swims in the water. 2. the animals in live in the forest. 3. the lions is fierce in the animals. 4. the Bats is live caves. Other errors: 1. The elephants a huge and animals. 2. The lions fierce an animals. 3. An animals is live on forest. 4. Bats live caves. 5. Bats is live at the caves. Appendix 2 is in the hardcopy.