Irregular verbs

[dr_whom]

A line from the film Prelude to a Kiss that I thought was worth preserving:

"So then you could do or be or have the things that they did, or... beed, or had?"

Comments

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

:-D

Similar to 'Then Anthi went and beed Touga's Rose Bride,' though not the same.

[dr_whom]

The actor delivered it just perfectly, too. Just that teeny little semi-pause and awkward facial expression that means 'I just realized this sentence doesn't quite work, but it's too late to change it now.'

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Most excellent. Fascinating lexical-ish gap, isn't it?

[dr_whom]

Yes. Reminds me a bit of Yiddish verb topicalization, actually, where in general it looks like the thing in Spec is the infinitive of the verb at hand, but if the verb is irregular you just take the irregular finite stem and slap the infinitive ending on that instead.

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Ooh, now that is fascinating. Huh.

[dr_whom]

Here's a great example sentence:

Voynen   voynt    er in Amerike, ober izn    iz er fun  England.
live.INF live.3sg he in America  but  is.INF is he from England
'Where he lives is in America, but what he is is from England.'

And here's a paper by Ellen Prince and someone that discusses this phenomenon.