I am confused

[cema]

Pay - paid, not payed
Play - played, not plaid

Is that a rule or an exception? (This being English, may not be that different.)

Comments

[cema.livejournal.com]

Technically, one could introduce a difference between a rule (code: something that can be executed) and an exception (data, such as an array or list of individual exceptions). In linguistics, my understanding is the situation is similar. Of course, if the rule only covers one or two cases, it is trivial and in practice not really different from an exception.