By Past perfect, Idioms

Hi FandorinYou seem to be mixing things up.Angliholic's sentence is not an example of the idiomatic "to have got", which means basically the same thing as "to have" or "to possess".In that idiom, it is not possible to change the word 'got' to...

MrPedantic wrote:Hello Julie But on the whole, non-standard natives make different mistakes from non-native standards. NSNs may be unusual in grammar, but they're usually strong in idiom. And a very good NNS will often hyper-correct (in the use of the subjunctive, for instance, or the past...

Julielai wrote: Just out of curiosity, Mr. P, how do you distinguish a native speaker who's learned a non-standard form of English from a decent non-native speaker? (e.g. How can you tell if a speaker born in India, Singapore or other Asian countries is native?) Hello Julie I'm not sure I...

Thank you. Instinctively, based on what I know (have learned) so far, your sentence makes sense and even might be a correct one but I have this feeling that the use of the word "always" in the present contiuous mode might not be palatable to some people. How about it? I think I read it from some...

American idioms again That's why I said it! I'm always trying to use some interesting phrase or idiom that will stimulate further discussion! (As for the explanation, Maple beat me to the punch.) CJ

Pastsimple wrote: CalifJim wrote:I plead the fifth.American idioms again . This was a new one for me. plead the fifth v. To decline to give self-incriminating information. Refers to the fifth amendment of the US Constitution, which states that no citizen "shall be compelled in...

CalifJim wrote:I plead the fifth.American idioms again . This was a new one for me.

That's correct, Abbie. The past participles are 'gotten' and 'forgotten' in AmE. Nevertheless, the idiom "have got" to mean simply "have" takes "got", not "gotten". I have (got) a computer on my desk just now. I am using it to respond to this question. I have gotten/bought a computer this...