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How snuck sneaked into English and drug is still dragging behind: A corpus study on the usage of new past tense forms for sneak and drag in British and American English

Tracking diachronic changes in usage across different varieties of English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2014

Camilla Søballe Horslund
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Extract

Language observers may have noticed the existence of two past tense forms for the verb to sneak in American English, sneaked and snuck. Interestingly, both forms have not always coexisted; the original form is sneaked, and snuck has only recently become a real competitor for sneaked (Hogg, 1988: 31–32). The verb to drag seems to be somewhat in the same situation with the original past tense form dragged as well as the new form drug (Bybee & Moder, 1983: 252). However, drug is much less frequent than snuck. Murray's (1998) study on the attitudes towards snuck and drug suggests some difference in the usage of these forms across registers.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , December 2014 , pp. 51 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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