Wow, doesn’t anyone read the Master anymore?
With all due deference to the Master, “In other words, got means you obtained something in the indefinite past, and gotten means you recently acquired it.” isn’t quite on the mark.
Among those who use “gotten” as the past participle of “got”, most would never say “He was losing for a while, but he’s got twenty points in the last minute”. But they would be perfectly comfortable saying “He was losing for a while, but he’s gotten twenty points in the last minute”. They would also be perfectly comfortable saying “He had gotten the coat decades ago” and such things. The difference isn’t in terms of how recently the acquisition came.
The difference is simply that “got” is the preterite (just like “ate” or “forgot”) and “gotten” is the past participle (just like “eaten” or “forgotten”), with the additional idiosyncratic idiomatic wrinkle that one can use “have got” (and similarly for any of the inflections of “have”) to mean simply “have” in the sense of “possess”.
I noticed my girlfriend used “boughten” as a verb today.
Her sister: You owe me $7 for that.
Her: Hey, I’ve boughten you food lots of times.
This is in the Ottawa/Gatineau region.
I love gotten candy, whereas my wife prefers Everlasting Got-stoppers.
No. In Germanic languages, there is a distinction between “strong” and “weak” verbs. The stem vowel of strong verbs change when you form the past tense, e.g., come, came. These vowel changes follow regular patterns that ancient grammarians were well aware of. Sometimes the past tense ends in -en; sometimes it doesn’t. “Weak” verbs are formed by adding a dental suffix, i.e., walk, walked.
For what it’s worth, it’s always a verb, even in “That’s boughten bread”. It’s just a verb in its past participle form, and thus can be used as a modifier of a noun. Just as one can say “That’s spilled milk” with the verb “spill” or “That’s broken glass” with the verb “break”, or “Those are morchivicated fratzelsnops”, or such things.
At least, that’s the way I see it right now… perhaps with more thought I’ll find that to be not the best analysis of the situation. But right now, I’d like to say it’s always a verb, but verbs can be made to function as adjectives, according to certain general rules.
I think this is the right analysis. It would make bought one of many verbs whose past participle is not the same as its preterite.
While there has been a tendency over the past few centuries and in particular over the past few decades to inflect verbs weakly such that “have hewed” and similar are seen around the world: There is hewed/have hewn, similarly showed/have shown, sowed/have sown, sheared/have shorn and shined/have shone. As I recall most or all of these were strong verbs in Old English.