This volume presents an in-depth study of the so-called irregular Past Tense (sing/sang) and Noun Plural (foot/feet) forms with Internal Vowel Alternation (IVA) in English demonstrating that they possess both a fixed phonological and semantic regularity. The innovative sign-oriented analysis and inductive methodology employed in this study are further supported by additional first language acquisition data, experimental studies and historical evidence. The data culled from multiple linguistic anthologies, dictionaries and thesauri have shown that although the IVA process...

Maintains that language in general and phonology in particular are instances of human cognitive behaviour. This book provides a set of principles connecting the phylogeny, ontogeny, and pathology of sound systems in human language.