Leveling of Irregular Past Participles in Military English

There is a change occurring in the grammar of American English. The past participles of strong verbs are leveling to the simple past form. Strong verbs which showed the most leveling were those with two different vowels from the infinitive (ring-rang-rung). The study of 1200 questionnaires was limited to the military community, because the fieldwork was carried out in Germany, and because a good cross section of American speakers was represented. Seven variables were analyzed in order to discover whether any pattern of use based on age, education, geographic location, race, sex and rank could be determined. An additional section which defines varieties of English is also included. Military English is defined as a variety of English.