This is a question about the origins of the idiosyncracies in tenses of words in the English language. I think the subject has been commented on a lot.
The plural of mouse is mice, and of louse, lice. But the plurals of house and spouse are not hice and spice.
The singular of words that end in “us” is sometimes “i”, sometimes not.
The past tense of fall is fell, not falled. But call is not celled, nor pall pelled.
Three possiblities:
The various words entered the English language from different languages, which had various ways of pronouncing the same tenses. So that mouse and louse came from a language that used an “-ice” suffix, and house and spouse from a language that used an “-ouses” one.
There was no uniformity in different areas of the country on how to express them. But within each area there was consistency. Eventually different versions won out for different words, giving rise to our present system of uniformity without consistency.
The words weren’t originally pronounced the same, the way they are today. So that mouse and louse might have had a pronunciation that called for an “-ice” plural, and house and spouse a pronunciation that called for an “-ouses” suffix. Over time they all came to be pronounced the same.
This issue has probably been dealt with a lot, so much of the above is probably complete nonsense. So what’s up?
I have taken some linguistics courses in college and have read many books on the subject of language besides just the texts for those classes. So this is not a completely uninformed answer, but I am working from memory and I have yet to study this truly in depth. I would reccomend Steven Pinker’s book “Words and Rules”, it deals with this subject.
**
In some cases this is true, but not as many as you might think. I do not think louse/lice or mouse/mice are cases of borrowings.
Let me explain the process that occured to cause these ‘irregular’ nouns. First of all you should know that a ‘regular’ noun is one that is pluralized with an ‘s’ or ‘es’. Box/boxes, frog/frogs, apple/apples, the list goes on and on. These words are pluralized via a rule; in other words, by adding an ‘-s’.* Regular in this case means rule-governed. Irregular nouns do not follow rules and the past tenses therefore have to be memorized.
Now, those of you who are quick on their feet may be thinking: “But the mouse/mice louse/lice plurals seem to be following the rule -ouse to -ice!” And you would be right. They do seem to be following a rule. This is because in a sense they are. Verbs do this too; the rule for regular past tense is add an -ed on the end.** There are irregular verbs such as teach/taught, buy/bought, fight/faught, seek/saught, slay/slew, fly/flew etc. Irregular words are in fact holdovers from times when plurals and past tenses were formed differently than they are today. At one time they were formed by following rules, but since they are now crowded out by the newer ‘regular’ forms, they must be memorized as separate words.
Back in the olden days plurals could be formed by changing the internal vowel of a word as in foot/feet or mouse/mice. In another region (I think) you could make a plural by adding an -en as in ox/oxen and brother/brethren (this also has internal vowel change). It was similar with the verbs. Anyway, I am not clear enough on the specifics to give you an exact rundown on how plurals and past tenses were constructed at various times and various places, so you’ll just have to accept that there were different ways of forming plurals and past tense back then. Eventually the new forms ‘-s’ and ‘-ed’ crept in and began to dominate the way people spoke. The older forms held on however, especially in common words.*** But now whenever an english speaker encountered a new word, whether it was a foriegn borrowing, an absolutely new coining, or the the user had simply never heard the past tense before, the speaker would tend to use the regular ending. This tendency reinforced itself because the more regular verbs and nouns there were, the harder it was to make the old forms conform to a rule. If you looked at the words louse/lice and mouse/mice, you might be able to form a rule, but you now also had the words: house/houses and grouse/grouses. The house/houses form wins out for any new words ending in -ouse because the rule “add -es” is now much more common than “-ouse changes to -ice” (or even ‘ow’ changes to ‘ay’).
Wow, this is a really long answer! I think I have basically explained it. Maybe someone else can be more concise. (I probably could if I was more alert, I am kind of tired right now). So I am going to sum this up right now.
First of all, the three points in the OP are correct. Second of all, point number two explains more of the inconsistencies than the other two points. Third, although I didn’t talk about it above, point number three also comes into play, but only to muddy the waters by making it harder to understand the rules.
An interesting test is used to show that the ‘-s’ plural and the ‘-ed’ past tense are regular. Show little kids (or anyone) a picture of a make-believe animal and say “this is a wug” (or any other nonsense word) then show them a picture with two of the animal, ask them “what do you call two of them?” The subjects usually say that they are call “wugs” rather than “wuggen” or “wugi”.
*Although if you listen to how you pronounce the ‘s’ on the end, you will notice that it may be pronounced in three different ways: ‘-s’, ‘-z’ and ‘-iz’. To hear each variation say the words ‘cats’, ‘dogs’ and ‘horses’. This is all governed by phonetic rules that make the words easier to say.
**Same deal as the previous footnote, there three are different ways to pronounce the -ed depending on which sounds precede it. For example, jumped is pronounced jumpt, thumbed is pronounced thumbd and handed (as in he handed me the letter) is pronounced handid.
***Perhaps the most common verb, ‘to be’, is also one of the most irregular. I am, he/she is, you/they/we are.
In the case of -us singular words becoming -i plural words, that’s a gift from Latin. A lot of Latin words have been adopted in medical, legal, and collegiate circles (alumnus (singular male), alumni (plural male), alumna (singular female), alumnae (singular female). I think.) Most of the Latin in our language, however, came from Norman French and was battered into submission, leaving behind their -i, -us, -a, -ae forms.
In the case of fall/fell, drink/drank/drunk, dive/dove, sneak/snuck, these are fossils of the way Old English tense congugations worked. Nearly all verbs went that way until sometimes in Middle English (think just before Chaucer). Abruptly, we started adding -ed to show past tense. Most verbs now work that way, and even some of the fossils are changing (Willow from BtVS: “Is it slew or slayed?”; Giles: “Both are correct.”)
I suspect that -ouse/-ice/-ouses springs from the same kind of language evolution.
English also had a habit - back in Old, Middle, and early Modern versions - of abruptly shifting thanks to locality. Londoners made their plurals by adding -s or -es. Before then, most people used -en. Shoen instead of shoes, doughtren instead of daughters. Some forms still hang tight - oxen, children, brethren.
Bill Bryce’s Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way is a fantastically fun read, if you’re interested.
Thanks a lot guys, for the detailed replies. I am especially gratified as my wife was skeptical of some of the theories when I was propounding them to her.
Good point by Neurodoc. I would have realized it had I thought about it, but couldn’t be bothered - not too bright, perhaps, in a thread about language. Sorry.
English is, in origin, a Germanic language. In all Germanic languages, there are essentially two classes of verbs: strong and weak. Strong verbs form the past tense from the present by ablaut; i.e., vowel mutation. Weak verbs form the past tense from the present by adding (in English) the suffix “-ed”. Thus, “drink” is a strong verb, “call” a weak one.
(It isn’t really accurate to say “the past tense is formed from the present tense”, but it’s close enough for government work.)
In nouns, we have similar formations. Strong masculine plurals are “men”, “geese”, “mice”, and the like (see Tolkien on the “dwarfs/dwarves/dwarrows” difference), formed against by ablaut. Weak masculine plurals are formed in “-(e)s”, “houses”, “horses”, and such; a lot of words (e.g., “shoes”) have been assimilated to the weak masculine form because is more common. “Ox/oxen” is unique in that it is the only weak neuter plural surviving from Anglo-Saxon times (“brethren” and “kine” are later formations).
Why do we have these features? Well, as I say, they’re essentially hangovers from English’s roots. I suppose that one day, we’ll say “goed” and “oxes”. Of course, then we’ll assimilate prepositions to nouns to form a system of declensions, and start over…
It should probably be mentioned that the reason the ‘irregular’ verbs are called ‘strong’ is because they didn’t undergo change like the ‘weak’ verbs. (At least this is what I remember the explanation being.) Strong, in this sense, has to do with how the past tense remained the same despite an inundation of -ed ending words. Weak verbs, by contrast, knuckled under and changed to the -ed ending. I mean lest you think they were inferior or something.
Yeah, I’m sorry for not making that clear in my first post. Both the past tense and present tense actually come from a root form which I think corresponds to the infinitive. (to think, to walk, etcetera…)
