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I came across this sentence in a textbook called Reading Explorer (Level 2, 3rd edition, page 31) published by National Geographic. I think the verb here should be the past form "sang" instead of p.p. "sung". I hope this can be justified and if not, why is the past participle used here?

The sentence is as follows and an original picture is also attached.

"The research revealed that only 2 percent of male sparrows sung a different song from the standard tune."

Enter image description here

Peter Mortensen
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SeriousJ
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    You're right. That's probably a typographical error. – Seowjooheng Singapore Mar 30 '24 at 14:51
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    I think it is a typo. By the way, in educated AmE speech, this is a mistake, Especially in writing. Songs sung by male sparrows accounted for [etc]. I'd guess a typo. – Lambie Mar 30 '24 at 18:44
  • Related: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/603139/why-do-some-irregular-verbs-such-as-swing-swung-and-sting-stung-only-have-two – jlliagre Mar 31 '24 at 09:43
  • I would actually expect "sing" as it should be on-going, not simply in the past. There is no reason to believe that sparrows that used to sing the standard tune would cease doing so, and little more reason to expect non-standard birds to switch to the standard. – SoronelHaetir Mar 31 '24 at 23:58

2 Answers2

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Depending on how much you trust a quick Ngram search, sang is about 30 times more common than sung as the simple past form. But sung is very much still valid; all three definitions of sing given by TFD list it as an alternative form.

This usage isn't informal or uneducated, as some commenters have suggested; you can find countless attestations in formal contexts.

You can find it in The New York Times:

Alex Turner, from the Arctic Monkeys, found ways to distance himself from the teenage culture he sung about

In The Guardian:

Covering Low’s songs Silver Rider and Monkey on his next album, he sung the latter with Patty Griffin, which created its own story.

In The Economist:

the song they sung most often was nothing patriotic, but a lullaby in the Kumamoto dialect

In The Atlantic:

The piece they sung was that in which occur the lines [...]

In The Washington Post:

And it was that latter sentiment with which Franklin so mournfully sung that day [...] She sung the opening lines [...]

In Financial Times:

Meanwhile, he sung the praises of Amazon, Netflix’s newest competitor

In The Independent:

That is exactly what the UK showed Trump, and Theresa May, as we sung against everything they stand for.

In TIME:

He didn’t make the competition, but he did become a meme, inspiring numerous parodies, including spoofs by Jimmy Fallon—who sung it as Neil Young—[...]

Conclusion: there are no grounds for calling this usage of sung mistaken, nonstandard, or dialectal.

Edit: In case anyone thinks this usage is a recent innovation, Webster's 1828 dictionary also lists both "sung" and "sang" as valid "preterit tense" forms, but "sung" as the only valid "participle passive" form.

alphabet
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    Perhaps not nonstandard, but it is fair to say – as evidenced by comments on this very page – that it is frequently stigmatised by speakers. For a non-native speaker, I’d say best practice is still to stick with sang as the past tense, but recognise that sung is likely to be heard. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Mar 31 '24 at 10:34
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Sometimes the variation, and hence the stigma, is regional; for example sprang is rarer in the US today than in the UK. Other verbs besides sing to examine for historical variation in past inflections, all either originally or ᴇᴠᴇɴᴛᴜᴀʟʟʏ strong Class Ⅲ verbs, include cling, clink, drink, fling, ring, shrink, sink, sling, slink, spring, stink, swing, wring. But bing, ding, link, kink, ping, wing, zing are ᴍᴏꜱᴛʟʏ all too new to admit strong forms, while wink, blink, bring, think have their own tales. – tchrist Mar 31 '24 at 17:32
  • @tchrist A strong past-tense form for wink would be particularly interesting! – Janus Bahs Jacquet Mar 31 '24 at 17:58
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In American English dictionaries, e.g. Merriam-Webster, "sung" is listed as an alternative to "sang" for the past tense. Wiktionary marks it as "archaic or dialectal" as a simple past verb.

Personally (as an AmE speaker), the quoted passage sounds dialectal. It may well be a typo.

nschneid
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  • When talking about birdsong there's a tendency to use archaic or poetic forms. Because a lot of writing about birdsong is of that type. – Stuart F Mar 30 '24 at 16:06
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    Not in formal writing or in educated speech. – Lambie Mar 30 '24 at 18:45
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    Interesting. To me sang and sung sound equally acceptable, but Ngram suggests that sang is much, much more common as the simple past form. That said, many dictionaries list both; TfD has it in all three definitions of sing. – alphabet Mar 30 '24 at 22:52
  • Many native speakers and dialects confuse or blur the distinction between the past participle and the preterite, so it's not surprising that there are at least a few to be found in print. Certainly no more standard English than saying "I seen him." – Luke Sawczak Mar 31 '24 at 01:51
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    @LukeSawczak I certainly wouldn't say "I seen him," but I might say "He sung for hours." Dictionaries list "sung" as an alternate simple past form of "sing"; they don't list "seen" as a simple past form of "saw," since the latter is clearly nonstandard. – alphabet Mar 31 '24 at 03:29
  • @alphabet Both are reflexes of the same structural alteration, but one is more marked because it affects a more common verb and/or is more culturally tied to stigmatized dialects. (Nevertheless it does occur even 50 years ago in mainstream stuff, like Dylan's "I seen her on the stairs"! https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/changing-guards/) – Luke Sawczak Mar 31 '24 at 12:46
  • @LukeSawczak Your claim that this is "culturally tied to stigmatized dialects" is simply false, as the attestations from speakers of standard dialects in my own answer show. This has nothing to do with the "I seen her" construction. – alphabet Mar 31 '24 at 12:48
  • @alphabet My "this" referred to "seen", not "sung". I don't say (in fact I say not) that they're the same phenomenon culturally. – Luke Sawczak Mar 31 '24 at 12:59
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    @Lambie Sing is a strong Class Ⅲ verb whose normal past was sung in the 1600s and 1700s, variously either sang or sung in the 1800s, and much, much more commonly but not utterly invariably sang in the 1900s through today. – tchrist Mar 31 '24 at 17:38