A LITTLE BIT ABOUT BITTEN
By Kristen Di Gennaro
A reader sent me an email a while back sharing his language pet peeve about “the improper use of the verb ‘bite,’ ” or more specifically, when people use “bit” for the past participle as in, “I got bit by a dog.” In Standard American English, the past participle for “bite” is “bitten,” so the sentence would be “I got bitten by a dog.” The past participle is the form we use in passive sentences, where the subject of the sentence (in this case, I) is not the doer of the action but one who is acted upon (in this case, by a dog). If we change the structure of the sentence from passive to active, “bit” works just fine, as in “A dog bit me.”
In conversational English, we use active verb forms more than passive forms, making “bit” much more frequent than “bitten” in general. Additionally, many past participles and simple past forms are identical, such as the verb “accepted” in “I got accepted to my favorite school” and “My favorite school accepted me.” Finally, the -en at the end of “bitten” is unstressed, meaning we don’t pronounce it very clearly. In fact, most Americans pronounce the middle consonants not as a “t” but as a glottal stop, that sound we make in the middle of the expression “Nuh-uh!” to emphatically say “no.” After the glottal stop, we emit a nasal sound without much of a vowel, making the final syllable barely audible. So although it might not be Standard English (yet), we have at least three explanations as to why some speakers use “bit” in place of “bitten.”
This focus on “bitten” reminds me of when I lived in Italy and was training to teach English at Inlingua, an international language school. I was the only American in a group of about 10 trainees. The rest were British. We were each assigned a grammatical point to create a lesson around following the Inlingua method of oral presentation and repeated practice. I was assigned to teach the structure “have got,” as in “Have you got a pen?/I’ve got a pen.” The instructor commented later that she had assigned that grammar point to me as a challenge, because I speak American English and, unlike British speakers, typically use “have” as a main verb instead of “have got,” as in “Do you have a pen?” and “I have a pen.” After succeeding at my mock lesson, I remember one of the British trainees commenting that at least I didn’t use that awful word “gotten.” Although I was aware of the “have got” vs. “have” distinction, I hadn’t noticed until then that “gotten” was verboten in British English. Does this mean British speakers might say, “I’ve got bitten by a dog”? If you speak British English, or another variety of English, let me know which form you prefer.
Please share your language pet peeves and any other thoughts about language matters with your local linguist at languagematters@mattersmagazine.com.
Kristen di Gennaro is an associate professor of English at Pace University, where she teaches courses in linguistics.
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