"risen" for "raised"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Feb 21, 2008, at 8:27 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 10:36 AM, <RonButters at aol.com> wrote:
>>
>> Perhaps this is just a typo the both the author and editor missed--
>> or a
>> hypercorrection--or do people really normally use "risen" as the
>> past participle of
>> "raise"?
>>
>> "Campbell has risen far more in campaign contributions than his [two]
>> opponents combined, with a large chunk coming from builders and
>> contractors." --
>> Lauren Sellers, "Three with varied viewpoints want Allen's house
>> seat," ORLANDO
>> SENTINEL, 2-21-08, pB3.
>
> I blame the insidious grammar checker in Microsoft Word. When I run
> the sentence with "raised" through the checker in MS Word 2003, it
> suggests replacing "raised" with "risen". So most likely it's a
> grammatical Cupertino [*].
>
> [*] http://blog.oup.com/2007/11/spellchecker/

same with my version of MS Word.  interestingly, the original *has* a
reading, parallel to
   Cambpell has risen far more in net worth than ...
(with "far more in ..." serving as an extent adverbial) but this
wasn't the reading intended above (where "far more in ..." is a direct
object).  so why should the grammar checker go after "raised"?

perhaps because using forms of RAISE where RISE is called for is a
moderately common error, treated (not always well) in lots of advice
manuals.  the reverse error is much less common.

but more is going on here, since my grammar checker (correctly)
catches at least some occurrences of RISE for RAISE, as in:
   Campbell has risen more children than his siblings.
   Campbell has risen a lot of money.
(and it correctly raises no objection to the versions of these with
"raised").

on the other hand, it incorrects "risen" to "raised" in
   Campbell has risen a lot further than I have.
   Campbell has risen a lot more than I have.

so it looks like the program has some scheme for detecting direct
objects -- well, NPs following a verb -- but the program isn't very
good at distinguishing NPs from adverbials (because that would
involve, umm, actually understanding the sentences).

arnold

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org