Chapter published in:
Late Modern English: Novel encountersEdited by Merja Kytö and Erik Smitterberg
[Studies in Language Companion Series 214] 2020
► pp. 68–90
The myth of American English gotten as a historical retention
Lieselotte Anderwald | University of Kiel
In this article, I investigate where and when the
myth of American English as a conservative variety originates, and
how it has become linked to the verb form gotten in
particular. Drawing on corpus materials, prescriptive grammar
writers of the time, publications on Americanisms, and
nineteenth-century newspaper articles, this article shows that
gotten is not a historical retention, but was
revived in the nineteenth century in American English. However, this
revival was not linked (yet) to the idea of it being a specific
American form. Once this indexical link was established, however, it
seems to have fuelled the rise of gotten further.
The concept of gotten as indexing AmE linguistic
conservativism is thus indeed a myth (if a powerful one).
Published online: 18 March 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.214.03and
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.214.03and
References
Newspaper databases
AHN America’s
Historical
Newspapers
contains
over 1,000 newspapers published between 1690 and
1922, available
at http://infoweb.newsbank.com.
NCNP
Nineteenth Century U.S.
Newspapers
contains
ca. 1.7 million articles from
1800–1900, available
at http://find.galegroup.com/ncnp.
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