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

From:    Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
> Quoting Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>:
>
> [snip]
> > But "lot" remains a singular noun, a unit of measure
> > exactly equivalent, grammatically, to "inch", "meter",
> > "gallon", "bunch", "rod", "bale", and "sheaf".  If you
> > are going to mangle the language by writing "alot"
> > then you should also write "agallon", "ameter",
> > "abale", "aninch", and so on.
>
> I'm happy to believe that's perfectly true of your English, but
> I still doubt it's true for that of all native anglophones. That
> no such has spoken up to defend my view is disheartening, but
> ascribing that to an unrepresentative sample seems like a less
> unlikely hypothesis than very large numbers of anglophones writing
> it as one word despite feeling it to be two.
If I may, I will partially speak up in your defense.  I'm
fairly certain that for a number of speakers [@lOt/@lAt] is
a single lexical unit.  The test for this is whether they can
divide the [@] from the putative noun by some kind of modifier,
such as "whole" in "a whole lot".  (Contrary to what Padraic
says for himself, I can say "a whole lot", and that is in fact
what I would normally say. I take him at his word, though,
that he can't say it for himself.)

Incidentally, this discussion reminds me of the use of "a" as
"per", as in "once a day".  Etymologically, IIRC, this derives
from the Anglo-Saxon _on_, and was reduced in the same fashion
as the _on_ in participial constructions. The fact that this
construction has been ensconced in the standard language, but
that of "alot" has not, should pose a real quandary for language
prescriptivists.

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