Abstract
Fratini et al. (Fratini et al. 2014, Frequency and morphological irregularity are independent variables. Evidence from a corpus study of Spanish verbs. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 10[2]. 289–314) concluded that frequency and morphological irregularity are in Spanish, unlike in English, independent variables. In this paper, I take issue with that claim. On the one hand, it is argued that the borders between regularity and irregularity are diffuse, many of the verbs they classify as irregular might, therefore, not be so. In addition, the choice of lexemes they analyzed was far from adequate. Their set of irregular verbs contained many verbs formed by adding some prefix to a more frequent irregular verb (e. g. a-venir, a-tener, con-decir, con-mover, etc.) and many highly infrequent lexemes in general, barely in use in the speech community (e. g. abnegar, ablandecer, amoblar, amodorrecer, etc.). In an alternative corpus analysis, it has been found that, when these and other shortcomings in their research are dealt with, morphological irregularity and frequency are indeed strongly correlated variables also in Spanish.