Selecting Past - tense Forms for New Words : What ' s Meaning Got to Do With It ?

When irregular verbs are semantically extended or used in novel ways, speakers often find the-ed past tense more natural than the irregular past tense, as in Ross Perot thought he couldn't be sound-bited. Speakers' preference for-ed with denominal verbs like sound-bited is consistent with the predictions of formal grammatical theory. Many theorists regard this as support for the relevance of the constructs of formal grammatical theory. We present data from two experiments supporting the predictions of an alternative view, the Shared Meaning Hypothesis. The data suggest that speakers' feelings of naturalness reflect how readily the two possible forms (soundbitten, soundbited) can be connected to the intended meaning. Our approach doesn't require formal constructs, and helps illuminate speakers' sensitivity to factors which facilitate error-free communication.