Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: USAGE: gotten

From:Tristan McLeay <kesuari@...>
Date:Monday, June 24, 2002, 21:20
On Tue, 2002-06-25 at 07:08, Nik Taylor wrote:
> Tristan McLeay wrote: > > > Had i erased all of these emails on this subject, i'd not have gotten this > > > far. I wonder if you've gotten the sarcasm of my email. ;). > > > > Okay... I definitely have no idea. > > Speaking for my dialect. > > Gotten is used for get when it means: > Receive > Make/become (as in "get ready", "get things the way you like them")* > Understand** > Arrive* > Etc. > > Got is used when it means: > possess ("I've got one brother") > must (I've got to get this done") > Understand** > > For me, that's it. "(have) got" is, in fact, probably best analyzed as > a form of "have". > > *"Got" is used by some here, but in my idiolect, it's ungramatical. > **This is a weird one. I think that "got" is used when the thing being > understood is unstated, for example, "I've got it!" or "Have you got > it?" but, "Have you gotten the sarcasm of this e-mail?"
Perhaps because 'I've got it!' is more a fixed phrase? For the second, btw, I'd be much more likely to say 'Did you get the sarcasm of this email?'.
> So, your sentence that you weren't sure about, I'd say "I appear to have > GOTTEN confused", because in that case, it means "become confused".
That's the first sentence in this discussion with 'gotten' that sounds acceptible to me...