Peculiar Pasts
Monday, July 21st, 2003 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I've enquired elsewhere about this issue, but the answers are so wildly disparate that I'm beginning to think the question is more complex than it seems!
'Dreamed' and 'dreamt' are both valid past & past participle forms of the verb 'to dream' (according to Fowler and the OED, anyway). The '-t' form, however, seems to be much less widely accepted, and I'm told that it's more or less obsolete in American English.
Also applies to smelled/smelt, burned/burnt, learned/learnt ...
Question: Can anyone explain the difference between the '-ed' and '-t' forms?
'Dreamed' and 'dreamt' are both valid past & past participle forms of the verb 'to dream' (according to Fowler and the OED, anyway). The '-t' form, however, seems to be much less widely accepted, and I'm told that it's more or less obsolete in American English.
Also applies to smelled/smelt, burned/burnt, learned/learnt ...
Question: Can anyone explain the difference between the '-ed' and '-t' forms?
no subject
Date: Monday, July 21st, 2003 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, July 21st, 2003 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, July 21st, 2003 03:18 am (UTC)Generally I find the "-t" works for me as first person, and "-ed" as third...
no subject
Date: Monday, July 21st, 2003 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Tuesday, July 22nd, 2003 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, July 21st, 2003 03:15 am (UTC)Not, you understand, that this will answer your question; but it's interesting. "Snuck", incidentally, is the most recently coined irregular verb form in English.
no subject
Date: Monday, July 21st, 2003 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, July 21st, 2003 03:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Tuesday, July 22nd, 2003 07:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, July 21st, 2003 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, July 21st, 2003 05:05 am (UTC)But, as everyone else said, read the Pinker. Best titbit from it: only 2% of German nouns have regular plurals. Indeed, there are irregular methods of plural formation that are much commoner than the regular one.
no subject
Date: Monday, July 21st, 2003 06:19 am (UTC)*ponders more*
No. Cant think of a difference. I tend to personally prefer the 't' form however, they sound different and can be used to construct more appropriate sentences.
no subject
Date: Monday, July 21st, 2003 06:06 pm (UTC)It says it gets a feeling that "dreamed" is something in the past but in the middle past, while "dreamt" is in the distant and inaccessible past ...
... in Latin class we were told the past tenses were
imperfect - I was dreaming
perfect - I have been dreaming (?I dreamed?)
pluperfect - I had been dreaming (?I dreamt?)
There is certainly a hint of distance in the "I dreamt of far away lands and never dreamed that one day I would visit them".
Also, as may have been said by someone else, "smelled" feels like it is an action while smelt is more of a state.
E.g "the fire burned all night but the sausages did not get any more burnt"
In many cases "dreamt", "burnt", "learnt" are nouns or adjectives (the burnt sausage, the learnt phrased (and always a learn-ed expression, never a learnt one).
And sometimes it's how it fits into the rest of the sentence
e.g.
"the house was burnt" vs "the house burned all night"
"the lesson was learnt" vs "the lesson was learned by the class"