Are the following grammatically correct? If not, what are the correct irregular verbs in each? He sweated profusely. He had sweated profusely. He betted on the wrong horse. He had betted on the wrong house. She petted the dog. She had petted the dog. Many thanks, victo
I'm pretty sure I have seen 'swet' used but I think it's archaic and getting into it would be both pointless and needlessly confusing ... something the English language already needs no help with
pet is a regular verb infinitive - pet simple past - petted past participle - pet bet is an irregular verb infinitive - bet simple past - bet past participle - bet sweat is an exception, as it can be used in either form infinitive - sweat simple past - sweat/sweated past participle - sweat/sweated So, the choice is yours on the last one!
Yeah, there is some fluidity in some of these very short, monosyllabic verbs since there is an innate tendency to want to treat them similarly (though not always identically) to strong verbs, even when they aren't. Some have gained a level of either/or-ness, others have not.
That's right, the constant development of the English language includes it's adoption of the 'living' language - I have some OLD grammar books (ex-teacher), and they show many verbs, like these, that were irregular , but are now regular, etc. And dictionary and language based companies - i.e. Cambridge University Press, etc. do studies on the current living language when creating their corpus and materials.
This does mean, of course, that some words I don't really like, have made their way into the various dictionaries, such as gonna, and wanna But that's part of the development, and signifies their common use today, which needs to happen if a language is not to stagnate, so I can't complain (apart from this comment, eh? ).
