2. Those like spoke and spake; where the tense is the same and the conjugation the same, but where the form is different.
The bearings of these double forms (which, however, are points of general rather than of English grammar) are as follows. Their number in a given language may be very great, and the grammarian of a given language may call them, not double forms of the same tense, but different tenses. Let the number of words like swoll and swelled be multiplied by 1000. The chances are, that, in the present state of etymology, they would be called first præterites and second præterites. The bearing of this remark upon the so-called aorists and futures of the Greek language is evident. I think that a writer in the Cambridge Philological Museum[[57]] indicates the true nature of those tenses. They are the same tense in a different conjugation, and differ from swoll and swelled only in the frequency of their occurrence.
Difference of form, and difference of conjugation, may each simulate a difference of tense.
CHAPTER XXVI.
DEFECTIVENESS AND IRREGULARITY.
[§ 389]. In [§ 361] the distinction between irregularity and defectiveness was slightly foreshadowed. In pp. [243], [267], it was exhibited in its principles. In the present chapter the difference is more urgently insisted on.
The words that have hitherto served as illustrations are the personal pronouns I and me, and the adjectives good, better, and best. See the sections referred to above.
The view of these words was as follows: viz., that none of them were irregular, but that they were all defective. Me wanted the nominative, I the oblique cases. Good was without a comparative, better and best had no positive degree.