Re: USAGE: gotten

Quoting Tristan McLeay <kesuari@...>:

> On Sun, 2002-06-23 at 21:05, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
> > Quoting Tristan McLeay <kesuari@...>:
> >
> > > I was just installing Windows XP today and happened to notice that it
> > > said 'If you've had a computer before, you've probably GOTTEN things
> > > the way you like it', or some-such like that (the actual wording isn't
> > > important, 'gotten' there is being used in the same way as it was on
> > > the banner).
> > >
> > > 'Gotten' there seems wrong to me (and my younger brother, who generally
> > > speaks more Americanly than I do). Is that some usage of 'gotten' that
> > > hasn't (yet) passed into Australian English, or is it ungrammatical in
> > > the US too and just somehow managed to slip through?
> >
> > Almost all varieties of American English have two functionally distinct
> > past participles of the verb <get>:  <got>, which is homophonous with
> > the preterite form, and <gotten> which is not.  The former is used only
> > when "I've got (to)" is equivalent to "I have" or "I must". In all other
> > circumstances, <gotten> is used.
>
> Umm... so that means that I'm right and WinXP was wrong? (Because 'You
> probably have things the way you like it' is correct?)
The sense I get from the sentence you quoted was equivalent to "have"
in the sense of "to have something done". This has neither the
lexical meaning of "to possess" that "I've got" does, nor the modal
meaning of "must" that "I've got to" does.  Based on the criterion I
mentioned, "gotten" should be licit for Americans then.

(Also good to note is that in a country with about 260 million
English speakers, there's bound to be some variation in a grammatical
feature like this.)

> > <gotten> is actually the original form that predominated in the
> > US until the above exceptions were imported from Britain. This is
> > one of those instances where American English preserves an archaic
> > feature no longer current in British English, much like Americans
> > still often say "fall" for the season known in Britain as "autumn".
>
> I resent you're saying I speak British English! :P <--- recognising that
> my English is probably much like a dialect of British English.
:)

No, I've gotten* you pegged as from Australia.  With the newer members
of the list, though, it's not always easy to tell their place of
origin.

*(This came out spontaneously.)

> > (Likewise, sometimes RP has features that strike Americans as
> > old-fashioned, like the use of "amongst" instead of "among".)
>
> Which reminds me: does 'whilst' get misused in the US? I've noticed it
> appears to have become somewhat trendy down here and people are just
> using it as a direct synonym for 'while' in all circumstances.
In my experience <whilst> is nonexistent in American English unless
you're trying to affect a false Shakespearean accent.

> > > (My brother suggested that 'gotten' is used more to mean 'received',
> > > although 'I've gotten it' sounds wrong to me, too... I never (rarely)
> > > use 'gotten'; my younger brother does.)
> >
> > That's interesting.  Does that suggest that your brother's
> > use of English is heavily influenced by American dialect?
>
> I don't know about 'heavily', but it is moreso than mine. (Which is
> somewhat normal in Australia these days... When we aren't England, we're
> America... Too lazy to be ourselves, I guess...) I, for example, don't
> watch much television (and when I was younger was limited to watching
> the ABC which has a much higher proportion of Aussie and British stuff
> than commercian tv. does), and so missed out on a chance for it. My
> English has also been influenced by other things: I can't decide whether
> to say /kA:s@l/ or /k{s@l/, for example, and use /grA:f/ for -graph in
> at least some words (like 'telegraph' and 'paragraph', but not
> 'electromyograph'
Also, different people probably vary in their sensitivity to foreign
usages.  I've watched public broadcasting (which is heavy on British
sitcoms and documentaries here in the US) since I was capable of
watching television, but my speech is that of urban southeast Texas
entirely AFAICT.  (People tell me, though, that I don't "sound like
a Texan". I have often wondered what exactly is meant by that phrase
-- for some, certainly, that I don't sound like the cast of _Dallas_.)

=====================================================================
Thomas Wier          "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics  mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street   and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637     Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers

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