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WANG CHUN Posted 19 years ago
Grammar

The question about Morphological principle.

Hello
I just konw ride, rode, ridden is like irregular verb.
How can I use the morphological principle to explain ride changed to'' rode and ridden" not''roden"?
Thank you
  

Top answer

I don't know what morphological principle you are speaking of, but ride-rode-ridden is a relic not only of Old English, but probably of Indo-European. It is ' rode ' that changed, not ' ridden ', which was always ' geriden '. Old English had two pasts for ride , singular and plural (just as we still have two pasts for be : was, were ): I rad, we ridon .

— Mister Micawber

  • I don't know what morphological principle you are speaking of, but ride-rode-ridden is a relic not only of Old English, but probably of Indo-European.
  • It is ' rode ' that changed, not ' ridden ', which was always ' geriden '.
  • Old English had two pasts for ride , singular and plural (just as we still have two pasts for be : was, were ): I rad, we ridon .
  • Sometimes the singular past survived ( ride, rode, ridden ), sometimes the plural survived ( find, found, found ).
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1 Answers
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I don't know what morphological principle you are speaking of, but ride-rode-ridden is a relic not only of Old English, but probably of Indo-European. It is 'rode' that changed, not 'ridden', which was always 'geriden'. Old English had two pasts for ride, singular and plural (just as we still have two pasts for be: was, were): I rad, we ridon
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