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Re: More natural language questions

From:Muke Tever <alrivera@...>
Date:Tuesday, July 17, 2001, 10:40
From: "David Peterson" <DigitalScream@...>
> In a message dated 7/16/01 6:55:30 PM, fortytwo@GDN.NET writes: > > << That's probably a good way to view it, since it's often reduced to "a > lotta" or "alotta", I've also seen it written. It seems to be perceived > as a single word by most English-speakers. >> > > I wouldn't go that far. "A lot" may be thought of as > one word, but not "a lot of". At least, in my experience with > third/fourth graders. They all spell "a lot" "alot" (and I > don't see why it shouldn't be that way), but rarely > "alotta"--they know that's wrong. They do sometimes write > "a lot a" or "alot a", indicating that they're not sure what > word follows "a lot", but that it is a word on its own.
Well... I can understand "alot" for 'often' ("It happens alot") and "lotta" for 'amount of' ("a whole lotta X goin' on") but I'd imagine "alotta" to be rarer... Altavista counts: "lots of" 4,779,633 alot 1,018,220 lotta 475,555 "alot of" 470,362 "lotsa" 64,071 "a lotta" 21,421 ? alotta 5,164 "alotta fagina" 508 "lotsa of" 257 "lotta of" 163 "alotta of" 24 OK, enough of that. *Muke!