Re: USAGE: gotten

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...