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

From:Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>
Date:Sunday, December 28, 2003, 0:47
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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John Cowan <cowan@...>