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Part of
Late Modern English: Novel encounters
Edited by Merja Kytö and Erik Smitterberg
[Studies in Language Companion Series 214] 2020
► pp. 67–90

The myth of American English gotten as a historical retention

| 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).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: The myth
  • 2.Unmasking the myth: The corpus evidence
  • 3.Investigating the source of the myth
    • 3.1The collection of nineteenth-century grammars (CNG)
    • 3.2Dictionaries and glossaries of Americanisms
    • 3.3American newspapers
  • 4.Twentieth-century publications
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Newspaper databases
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 18 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.214.03and
References (67)
Newspaper databases
AHN America’s Historical Newspapers, contains over 1,000 newspapers published between 1690 and 1922, available at <[URL]>.
NCNP Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers, contains ca. 1.7 million articles from 1800–1900, available at <[URL]>.
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Anderwald, Lieselotte
2020. Chapter 12. American English gotten. In Voices Past and Present - Studies of Involved, Speech-related and Spoken Texts [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 97], ► pp. 188 ff. DOI logo

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