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

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.

> The simple fact of the matter is that you will not
> find "alot" in any English dictionary.
Since the word, so written, is in quitw common use, I find that perfectly
irrelevant.

> It's ugly and
> it should be banned!
Ah, the good ol' language police! :)

                                                  Andreas