Some Apparent Irregularities in English

Abstract

This paper deals with a fair number of apparent irregularities in English, especially as they relate to verbs, nouns, adjectives, and orthography as well as phonology. It provides, or at least attempts to provide, principled accounts for numerous surface irregularities often encountered in the structure of the English language. As such, this paper demonstrates that most surface irregularities in English are not genuine irregularities and thus English is much more regularly patterned and much more learnable than it is often made out to be.