Re: USAGE : English past tense and participle in -et

On Fri, 26 Dec 2003 08:54:17 -0800, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:

>> > On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>> >
>> > > Lately, I've seen alot of people misspelling the
>> past tense and passive
>> > > participle ending _-ed_ as **_-et_.
>
> Lately I've seen a lot of people using the non-word
> "alot" a lot.
If people believe it's a word and use it as such, it's a word, albeit a
nonstandard one.

> If we're going to admit "alot" why not also admit
> "afew", "alittle", "abunch" and "anumber".  If I can
> write "I have alot of ideas" I should be able to write
> "I have acouple dollars," and "I have abunch of
> grapes."
>
> Just a nother in along list of pet peaves of which I
> have more than afew.
I doubt you could legitimately justify *|alot of| (which just reads as a
spelling error to me) but my dysfunctional grammar radar is happier with
adverbial 'alot' ("He does this alot") where the sense of 'lot' = 'large
set [of things]' is diminished.

But certainly neither are acceptable in the acrolect.



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