On the Variation of Irregular Verbs: Regular Conjugation of the Most Frequent Irregular Verbs in the Written German

1 Abstract The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to find out, if the regular conjugation in preterite and the regular forming of past participle, or the absence of alternation of e and i in the 2nd and 3rd person singular, present tense indicative and in imperative singular concerning the most frequent irregular verbs have already reached the written standard German (in the informal spoken language they in some measure occur). In the first part (theoretical) the thesis explains some terms of language change, comments on the traditional classification of the irregular German verbs on the basis of ablaut and offers a more suitable one according to Bittner, sums up the main points from the codification literature. In the second part (empirical) a list of eleven irregular verbs is made (using W Corpus of the Institute for German Language in Mannheim), which are to be examined, a methodology is developed to detect the typing errors occurring in the found forms, and the eleven verbs are empirically researched. The conclusion presents the results and answers the main questions put in the introduction.