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

Quoting Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>:

> > > 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.
Terrible, innit?

But here I think the explanation is simple enough - many speakers feel /@lot/
to be a single word, and writes it accordingly.

(And please don't start arguing about that phonematization! You know what I
mean anyway.)

> 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."
Why not, indeed. Assuming they'e all felt to be monolexemic by the users -
this xenophone feel them to be different from "alot" on account of all being
dilexemic, and would find writing them together an extra complication.

                                                            Andreas