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Re: USAGE: gotten, boughten

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Wednesday, June 26, 2002, 10:40
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