dialect in novels

[Mark A. Mandel]

Natalie Maynor <maynor at CS.MSSTATE.EDU> writes:

>>>>>
On the question of "got," is our US use of "gotten" on the decline?
I was talking about it in a class recently, mentioning that "gotten"
vanished from British English a long time ago (but "forgotten" is still
used, isn't it?).  I then said our got/gotten contrast can be useful --
"I've gotten a dog" does not mean the same thing as "I've got a dog."
Several students said that they never use "gotten" at all -- that for
that first sentence, they'd say something like "I just got a dog" or
"I got a dog last week."
<<<<<

I use "gotten" the same way as Natalie, but I think I'm using it less and
less, moving towards her students' tendency to reword.

-- Mark