5.3 Correlation between aspect and verb inflection

The second question which this example study tries to answer is whether there are indications of diachronic change concerning the distribution of the regular and irregular form used in punctual and durative aspect. Thus, if we found the early instances of burnt to be associated more closely with punctual aspect and burned with durative aspect, we would be able to claim that the different meanings have historical origins.

The numbers shown in figure 8, which are in some cases certainly too low to be statistically significant, were calculated by searching the EEPF, EPD, ECF and NCF databases for instances of burned and burnt in typical syntactic environments which imply either punctual aspect or durative aspect. Levin already mentions “transitives with a focus on the completion of the activity” as typical instances of burnt and “adverbials specifying the length of time” as typically occurring with burned (2009: 66). Accordingly, the context words of the search words burned and burnt were down or ground for the punctual aspect and for, still, with, like or within for the durative aspect. In every direction, the context words were not supposed to be further away than three words - in the case of down and ground only the words right of burnt and burned were counted. The results were then manually double-checked in order to delete constructions where the context words had obviously no connection to the search words, like in "That was what I lived for. The fire burnt ferociously." Instead, phrases in which aspect was a distinct feature, like "the fire burned for five hours" or "the house burnt down to the ground" were those which needed to be taken into consideration. Finally, the results were reduced to the past tense.

Figure 8: The correlation between aspect and inflections of the verb burn in EEPC, ECF, EPD and NCF.

Although the numbers are statistically questionable, the high correlations between burnt and punctual aspect and between burned and durative aspect seem to have a historical tradition. An exception to this can be seen in the time between 1650 and 1750 when burnt tended to block out burned completely (cf. figure 7).  However, there is again no sign of a converging development but rather a replication of the overall trend concerning the distribution of the regular and irregular form as shown in figure 7. Thus, one feels inclined to say that on the one hand, aspect has indeed an influence on the decision to use burnt or burned, but on the other hand it should not be overestimated because it takes part in the general trend as well. Therefore, it is fair to say that Levin’s claim of a “functional motivation for retaining the variation” (2009: 67) cannot be supported. Instead, particularly the findings from the heydays of burnt suggest that aspect can never really prevent the unfashionable variant from losing ground. This is evidently the case in the following example from 1700-1750 in which the aspect of the verb could not be clearer: “It burnt for two years.”

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