Re: why the -s in English verbs?

"Christian" == Christian Weisgerber <naddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>> (b) English may have fewer markers than other
>> languages. (Reminds me of the book titled "Eats, Shoots and
>> Leaves.") Parsing verbs from nouns would be difficult
>> (statistically speaking) without the -s ending for 3Sg. (3Pl is
>> less a problem because subject nouns are already marked with
>> -s.)

Christian> That doesn't hold water. -s only appears in the
Christian> present tense. Most notably it is absent from the past
Christian> tense, and the past tense is used extensively in
Christian> English. No parsing problems there. The present tense
Christian> -s is also dropped colloquially/dialectally.

Yeah! The past tense forms should be considered the "most basic"
forms. :)

--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: danlee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
.

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