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

On Sat, 27 Dec 2003, Mark J. Reed wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 27, 2003 at 01:21:12PM -0800, Costentin Cornomorus wrote:
> > I like that notion of alot being a quantifier. In
> > this usage, it is clearly not the noun "lot"
> > though it's related.
>
> That's just overcomplicating the grammar to no purpose.
> The set phrase "a lot" may have collapsed into a
> monophonemic unit which is unanalyzed by most native
> speakers, but there's no reason to reinterpret it as a new
> word.
No, but it's been done, and there ain't nuffen you can do about it. It may
or may not have needed to have happened, it may or may not have had to
have happened, but it did, and there is a word spelt 'alot', and Google
finds almost four million uses of the word, well more than some
established words which no-one would whinge about (no doubt because it's
current in American English, whereas 'whinge', say, isn't). Perhaps the
current lot of dictionaries don't include the word 'alot', but you can be
assured that the next ones will (though some might include complaints, and
others might note it informal or the like).

And anyway, if something done overcomplicates the grammar to no purpose,
that shows there's something wrong with the grammar, not with the done
thing.

(Until this discussion, I would've complained about the word, but I think
I'm convinced now it's ligit.)

(ObEtymology: 'lot' comes from the OE word _hlot_, whereas 'allot' comes
from OFrench _alot_: _a-_ < Latin _ad-_ + _lot_.)

--
Tristan

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