... & Pinker 1993) argues that U-shaped-learning in correct past-tense acquisition is governed by one route which is rule-governed and enables the forming of the past-tense of regular verbs, while another involves a memory store of irregular past-tense forms. U-shaped-learning occurs when the irregular route is insufficiently strong to prevent the rule-governed regular route from overriding it (Pinker 1985). Evidence has been found for the model (e.g. Clahsen et al., 1992; Pinker 1997; Pinker and Prince, 1994), with the most concrete being Jaeger et al. (1996) who found that regular and irregular inflections are processed by different brain areas, which has also been supported by Ullman et al (1997) and Gopnik & Crago (1991). Prasada, Pinker and Snyder (1990) found frequency effects for irregular English past-tense forms, but no frequency effects for regular forms. Finally, Marcus et al (1992), in analysing 83 children's spontaneous speech for irregularities, found that they ...

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