Re: USAGE: gotten, boughten

Quoting Eli Ewing <CelticSlim@...>:

> Thomas Wier said:
> >> Still, it says here that "was going," "used to go," and "went" are all
> >> forms of imperfect past, and that "was going" is the "past continuous"
> >> construction, i.e., one specific imperfect form.
> >
> >Says where? Whatever you're reading, it's wrong.  The simple past
> >(aka preterite) has no set aspect to it, although the tendency is
> >to use it for aorist functions.
>
> As the term applies to English, I was taught that all
> three of these forms are (or can be, at least) imperfect.  I.e. "went" can
> be imperfect because the sentence "He went to the store" doesn't necessarily
> imply that the action is finished.  He could still going to the store,
> still be gone (at the store), or he could be back.
Okay, but if you said "I ran the car into a tree", then it's fairly
certain that you are *not* still in the process of doing so.  This
was the point that I've already made:  whatever the simple past is
in English, it's *not* simply imperfect or aorist or perfect.  The
aspectual distinctions seem to be lexically based, not a morphological
result of the simple past form.

=====================================================================
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