Sowing the seeds of doubt
On Friday, a student of mine asked me how the verb 'show' was conjugated, and I told her that although it used to irregular, it is now regular, with normal -d endings. As readers of 18th- or 19th-century authors may remember, the past forms used to be not 'showed' and 'shown' as today, but 'shew' and 'shewn', for example: "We shew Fanny what a good girl we think her by praising her to her face" (Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814); and "I had not been long in my own room, after breakfast, when Mr. Crawford was shewn in" (ibid). This prompted me to think, yesterday, of the verbs 'sow' and 'sew'. Convinced that the second and third forms (or past simple and past participle) were 'sewed', 'sewn', 'sowed' and 'sown', I turned to the Oxford dictionary, only to find that 'sowed' and 'sewed' also exist as third forms. A quick search of the internet reveals that people do indeed use these forms: gardeners sharing tips on online forums say "I have sowed white clover" or "I have sowed my seeds of lettuce". There is even a song called "I have sowed the seed". Examples of 'sewed' are dominated by Job 16:15, "I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and defiled my horn in the dust", although if the Book of Job is excluded from the search, there are still well over 100,000 results.
Upon finding these -d forms in the dictionary, my initial reaction was "who says that?" At first, I blamed the changes, as I saw them, on non-native speakers, but then realised that these verbs can change from -n to -d endings without any outside influence, as we have seen with 'show'. Expanding on this, I would think that English verbs have two main endings, -n and -d, among others, and that the two have been in competition for a long time. Are 'sew' and 'sow' the latest verbs to be dragged across the no-man's-land from one side to the other? Could the -d endings squeeze out the -n endings entirely some day?
To try and get to the bottom of this, I have decided to look into the history of these three verbs (sew, sow and show), as well as others. I decided to limit myself to monosyllabic verbs ending with the /əʊ/ sound. I've drawn up a list of them, and am now in the process of researching them.
It turns out that going from an -n ending to a -d one doesn't happen overnight. I have quoted Jane Austen above: in fact, her novels contain almost equal numbers of "shew" and "showed", "shewn" and "shown", which indicates that 'show' was still in flux. And it had been for quite a while: Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) is just as undecided when it comes to 'show' as any of Austen's books. Furthermore, both authors used 'shewed' (albeit less than either 'shew' or 'showed'), which gives food for thought.
Upon finding these -d forms in the dictionary, my initial reaction was "who says that?" At first, I blamed the changes, as I saw them, on non-native speakers, but then realised that these verbs can change from -n to -d endings without any outside influence, as we have seen with 'show'. Expanding on this, I would think that English verbs have two main endings, -n and -d, among others, and that the two have been in competition for a long time. Are 'sew' and 'sow' the latest verbs to be dragged across the no-man's-land from one side to the other? Could the -d endings squeeze out the -n endings entirely some day?
To try and get to the bottom of this, I have decided to look into the history of these three verbs (sew, sow and show), as well as others. I decided to limit myself to monosyllabic verbs ending with the /əʊ/ sound. I've drawn up a list of them, and am now in the process of researching them.
It turns out that going from an -n ending to a -d one doesn't happen overnight. I have quoted Jane Austen above: in fact, her novels contain almost equal numbers of "shew" and "showed", "shewn" and "shown", which indicates that 'show' was still in flux. And it had been for quite a while: Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) is just as undecided when it comes to 'show' as any of Austen's books. Furthermore, both authors used 'shewed' (albeit less than either 'shew' or 'showed'), which gives food for thought.