The regularization of Old English weak verbs

Abstract

This article deals with the regularization of non-standard spellings of the verbal forms extracted from a corpus. It addresses the question of what the limits of regularization are when lemmatizing Old English weak verbs. The purpose of such regularization, also known as normalization, is to carry out lexicological analysis or lexicographical work. The analysis concentrates on weak verbs from the second class and draws on the lexical database of Old English Nerthus, which has incorporated the texts of the Dictionary of Old English Corpus. As regards the question of the limits of normalization, the solution adopted are, in the first place, that when it is necessary to regularize, normalization is restricted to correspondences based on dialectal and diachronic variation and, secondly, that normalization has to be unidirectional.