![]() When past tense forms of irregular verbs cannot be formed by rule, purportedly they must be stored in rote memory ( Pinker, 1991). As a result, all past tense forms do not preserve the (present tense) stem so that many past and present forms differ in their orthographic and phonological form. The English language, however, possesses many irregular verbs (about 180) where the past tense does not include an –ed ending. Advocates of a more traditional dual route account claim that recognition of regular past-tense verbs ( talk-talked) uses a rule-based process where an –ed past tense marker is affixed to the present tense form of the verb. ![]() Those who advocate a single processing system argue that processing of all words benefits from the extent to which words that are similar in form tend to be similar in meaning ( Li, 2006 McClelland & Elman, 1986 Rueckl, Mikolinski, Raveh, Miner & Mars, 1997 Rueckl & Raveh, 1999 Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986 Seidenberg & Elman, 1999). There is a long-standing debate in the word recognition literature as to whether native speakers of a language process irregular (e.g., ran-run) and regular (e.g., walked-walk) verb forms by common (single) or different (dual-route) mechanisms. Results demonstrate the influence of first language on inflectional processing in a second language. Unlike native speakers, neither group showed reliable facilitation to stem change irregulars. Like native speakers, Serbian, but not Chinese bilinguals matched for proficiency, showed facilitation due to form overlap between irregular past and present tense forms with a nested stem. Native speakers of English revealed comparable facilitation across regularity and greater facilitation for nested than change stem irregulars. Overall, semantic richness of irregular verbs (nested and irregular change) and of regular verbs (high and low resonance) was matched. Materials included irregular nested stem (drawn-DRAW), irregular change stem (ran-RUN), and regular past tense–present tense verb pairs that were either low (guided-GUIDE) or high (pushed-PUSH) in resonance, a measure of semantic richness. My field-based scientific work in linguistics corroborates the anticipated devastating effects of imposing a national language on a culturally diverse people.We used a cross-modal priming procedure to explore the processing of irregular and regular English verb forms in both monolinguals and bilinguals (Serbian-English, Chinese-English). In working across five decades with such organizations as local, state and national governments, school systems, businesses, universities and translation organizations, I have learned the importance of linguistic freedom and the value of linguistic diversity. ![]() My work in the science of language has taken me to three continents and more than a dozen countries, and has afforded me first-hand knowledge of the freedoms inherent in linguistic diversity, as compared to the limited and short-lived political expediency of legislating a national language. Contrary to popular discussions among persons without scientific training in linguistics, the theoretical unifying benefits of an official national language cannot justify the likely ensuing linguistic discrimination and denial of rights of non-English speakers. Legislating a national language opens wide the door of marginalization and even disenfranchisement of millions of Americans and would-be naturalized American citizens.
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