Figure 2.10 The use of quotative discourse markers over time in California
Source: Rickford (2007)
Sociolinguists like to study quotatives for another reason. Whereas a vowel
shift or a consonant cluster simplification^7 might stretch out over decades
and require many years of study, quotatives change quickly. You may have
observed this in your own speech or in the speech of those around you.
Variation in verb morphology: strong and weak verbs
Most English verbs fall into one of two groups: strong or weak. Weak (also
called regular verbs) form the past tense and the past participle by the
simple addition of a suffix (for example, -ed, talked, smacked, climbed,
cleaned). Strong or irregular verbs are much harder to predict because the
past forms are generated by a change to the vowel in the root syllable, and
sometimes to consonants as well, for example, shrink, shrank, shrunk.
Bybee and Slobin (1982) summarize the history and relationship between
weak and strong verbs, and establish that while there are thousands of verbs
that fall into the weak (-ed) class, only two hundred or so can be identified
as strong. On the other hand, “of the 30 most frequent past-tense forms, 22
are irregular [strong]” (1982: 265). Since the Old English period, hundreds
of strong verbs have weakened, for example.