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

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Friday, December 26, 2003, 17:41
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