I’m Crept Out!: Factors Motivating Lexical Decision for Multiple Past Tense Word Forms of the Same Lexeme
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5195/pur.2025.136Keywords:
Morphology, Concatenation, Corpora DataAbstract
In English, verb forms can take on the past tense in different ways. Adding a past-tense -ed suffix is considered a regular form of changing a verb to the past tense in a process known as concatenation. Concatenation can be defined as the process of two morphemes being put in a sequential order to form words, where morphemes are the smallest meaningful use of language. However, irregular forms of inflecting past tense through concatenation also exist, for example with -t, rather than -ed. In this way, speakers must decide which form they will use in their utterances. This paper examines the factors that influence people's choices between word forms, with a focus on phonological and semantic context. Through the exploration of corpora data, it was found that semantic context has a greater influence on word form choice than phonological factors, but additional factors such as utterance register were also found to be influential.
References
Aronoff, Mark. 2019. “Competitors and Alternants in Linguistic Morphology.” Studies in Morphology 5:39-66. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02550-2_2.
Davies, Mark. 2004. “British National Corpus (from Oxford University Press).” English Corpora. https://www.english-corpora.org/bnc/.
Davies, Mark. 2008-. “COCA: "the Corpus of Contemporary American English.” English Corpora. https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/.
Google. n.d. “NGrams.” Google Books NGram Viewer. https://books.google.com/ngrams/.
Gray, Tyler J., Andrew J. Reagan, Peter S. Dodds, and Christopher M. Danforth. 2018. “English verb regularization in books and tweets.” PLOS ONE 13 (12). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209651.
Haspelmath, Martin, and Andrea D. Sims. 2010. Understanding Morphology. N.p.: Hodder Education.
Merriam Webster. n.d. “What's the past tense of 'creep'? Is it creeped or crept?” Merriam-Webster. Accessed July 17, 2025. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/whats-the-past-tense-of-creep.
Nevins, Andrew, Marc van Oostendorp, Elizabeth Hume, and Keren Rice. 2011. “Phonologically-Conditioned Allomorph Selection.” The Blackwell Companion to Phonology, (January).
Rahman, Rasha A. 2009. “Semantic context effects in language production: A swinging lexical network proposal and a review.” Language and Cognitive Processes 24 (5): 713-734. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690960802597250.
Vejdemo, Susanne, and Thomas Hörberg. 2016. “Semantic Factors Predict the Rate of Lexical Replacement of Content Words.” PloS one 11 (1). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147924.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Rebecca Gips
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
- Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
- The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
- Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
- The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
- Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
- The Author represents and warrants that:
- the Work is the Author’s original work;
- the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
- the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
- the Work has not previously been published;
- the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
- the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
- The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.
- The Author agrees to digitally sign the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work.
