LoL! Well, I've never met an American who blinked when someone used the word "gotten" unless they'd been trying desperately to Britpick a fanfic, so it's a pretty common usage.
There are a number of the irregular verbs which have ceased to be irregular in England and are still irregular in America. If you want to approach it from a usage point of view, the less inflected a verb from Old English is, the farther it's gotten from its origins. It's the people who let older inflections fall by the wayside who've forgotten the "proper" way to use the word! *snicker*
Stephen Pinker's done some excellent work on the topic:
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/26506;jsessionid=aaagR60jWSMNgN is a review of one of his books.
http://www.cshl.org/public/HT/ss00-cshla.html describes Pinker's theory fairly well.
But if you're really into the thesis you could try reading http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/~jlm/papers/PastTenseDebate.pdf ...
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-02 04:25 am (UTC)There are a number of the irregular verbs which have ceased to be irregular in England and are still irregular in America. If you want to approach it from a usage point of view, the less inflected a verb from Old English is, the farther it's gotten from its origins. It's the people who let older inflections fall by the wayside who've forgotten the "proper" way to use the word! *snicker*
Stephen Pinker's done some excellent work on the topic:
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/26506;jsessionid=aaagR60jWSMNgN is a review of one of his books.
http://www.cshl.org/public/HT/ss00-cshla.html describes Pinker's theory fairly well.
But if you're really into the thesis you could try reading http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/~jlm/papers/PastTenseDebate.pdf ...