Got It!

[rabidsamfan]

You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 100% Expert!

The Commonly Confused Words Test
http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=14457200288064322170


After several tries, I admit, and some methodical testing.

Of course, now she's starting to put her reasoning on line at http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/
but here are the answers that work:


1. loose
2. breath
3. barely
4. wish/your
5. went/me
6. she/I
7. It's
8. there/their
9. had gotten/their (I disagree with her on this one, I think that got/their is equally valid.)
10. they're/than
11. principal
12. there/morale
13. who's/whose
14. difficult/accept (again, I disagree, and would take hard/accept as also perfectly within normal usage.)
15. medal
16. paid/biweekly
17. priceless
18. yolks
19. passed/past
20. bare
21. advise
22. either a or b
23. saw/seen
24. device
25. risky
26. necessary/stationery
27. assessing/aspect
28. counsel
29. assure/insure
30. ;/better
31. hanged/practicing (I think hanged/practising also works, btw.)
32. effect/economic
33. all of the above
34. towards/while
35. inquire/who
36. either a or b
37. phenomenon
38. :/sensuous (hmmm. I thought you used a semicolon to separate independent clauses.)
39. irrelevant
40. channel (reaches for dictionary....)

Comments

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

She probably does have both answer set up. But "gotten" is perfectly good American -- not just slang. It's an archaic usage in England, too.

[marigoldg.livejournal.com]

I don't have the big fat Oxford here with me, that specifically uses the words N.Am slang past participle of "get" for "gotten" so I can't quote it exactly but here is this definition from the Compact Oxford Dictionary:

"gotten
N. Amer. past participle of GET.

USAGE The form gotten is not used in British English but is very common in North American English, though even there it is often regarded as non-standard."

So it might be a regional thing in the States, used some places and not others, or perhaps is being used more commonly nowadays? Anyway, not something we need to argue about... : )

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

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 ...

[gentlehobbit.livejournal.com]

I don't know what Pinker says (haven't checked the links), but 'gotten' is a perfectly acceptable form of 'got'. And as you say, it is the older of the two variants -- kept alive by the immigrants in the early days of the populating of North America. Meantime, England evolved towards the new form of 'got'. (My use of the word 'evolve' isn't a judgement call! I personally have no problem with either variant although I tend to use 'got'.)