Tuesday 1 February 2011

Shining at the Oscars

Many thanks to englishskills1111 who rightly pointed out that irregular verbs tend to become regular over time and that consequently, ‘shone’ is somewhat more antiquated than ‘shined’.
So far, we have looked at three possible distinctions between different usages of these forms:
  • ‘Shined’ tends to be used in American English; ‘shone’ is more common in British English.
  • ‘Shined’ is transitive; ‘shone’ is intransitive.
  • ‘Shined’ is the modern form; ‘shone’ is more antiquated.

And whilst all of these distinctions are clearly defensible, none of them quite tell the full story.
  
Enter the Sun King
Let’s look at the matter in a little more detail:

The AE/BE divide clearly does not tell the whole story, since many writers of English are not specifically under the influence of one culture and the evidence shows that usage varies in both groups. 

Nor does a straightforward classification into transitive and intransitive bear close scrutiny.

Both of the following examples are transitive:
The man who outshone the Sun King (Biographical work by Charles Drazin, 2008)

I’m feeling outshined (Lyrics to Outshined by rock band Soundgarden, 1991)


And although there is certainly a generation issue, too, with younger speakers/writers preferring regular forms, ‘shone’ is used both transitively and intransitively on both sides of the Atlantic (and elsewhere), but ‘shined’ is reserved mainly for transitive use, so you would expect to encounter ‘the sun shone’ much more frequently than ‘the sun shined.’ 

A further dimension
Where there is a choice, however, some – mainly but not exclusively, American – writers consistently favour regular verb forms over irregular ones and extend this principle to the past tense of ‘shine’, even when used intransitively: 

Which star shined brightest at the Oscars?

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/29349502/ns/today-entertainment/

In part, this can be explained by adding a further dimension in which the intransitive use of ‘shined’ is more common in a figurative context than when the verb retains its literal sense:

The stars that shone in the night sky
The stars who shined at the Oscars

But it’s a little more complicated than that. It has something to do with the nature of language and something to do with fractals. In a way, the answer is in the stars. And I’ll explain why next time.