@Brus - I think you mean run and flown, both past participles. And we do indeed have something vaguely similar with run. 'She's run off her feet today', 'He's a bit run down at the moment' - Nobody ran her off her feet. nobody ran him down, to paraphrase your argument above.There's no agent at work here. And as I've said before we have constructions like 'OK, are we all done?' and 'I'm all done in.'

The passive analogy is inviting but it has some problems. If we look at some other stationary verbs: 'The patio had been perfectly positioned to catch the sun' is obviously passive. But what about 'The house was positioned between two large oak trees'. 'The TV is placed where everybody can get a good view.' I'm not so sure here; I would tend to argue that positioned and placed are adjectives here. And what about situated, it's nearly always an adjective.

As for this website, I would have hoped it was for discussing the fascinating subject of the English language. And to repeat again, much of what is said to be "correct" applies mainly to formal English, not necessarily to conversational English. For example you quite correctly use the expression 'by whom'. But it's not one I'd ever use, but that's my choice, not my ignorance; for many of us it sounds stilted and old fashioned, and I don't think you are being any more correct than I would be saying 'who by'. Just as I don't think somebody who says 'It is I' is being any more correct than somebody else who says 'It's me'. In fact the formally "correct" version is usually rather inappropriate.

On the other hand you use the expression 'begs the question' the same way I would. But there are others who would say we were both using it incorrectly.

I do thinks there's so much more to the study of English than concentrating on the rules of the formal language. And if you don't like certain expression, don't use them. But why force this straitjacket on others, who in their way, are enriching our language.

@Arthur - This use of 'sat' and 'stood' is idiomatic, so reeling off the standard tense system doesn't make a lot of sense. The proof of which is that this idiomatic use is very limited, it only occurs with the stationary verbs 'sat' and 'stood'. Nobody uses it with 'fly' and 'run', which are verbs of movement; that was a total red herring.

You may not like 'he was sat there' or 'she was stood there'. But there's a certain logic to it if we treat them as adjectives. This simply wouldn't work for verbs of movement, it would make no sense.

I do find it rather tiresome and frankly patronising when somebody takes it on themselves to teach us the tense system. I may not always agree with them, but most of the people who comment on this web site are pretty clued up as to basic grammar, so spare us the beginner's class in tenses, please.

@Brus and @D.A.Wood. As a Briton who regularly says 'the government are' and 'singular they' - 'If anybody has a question, they should put their hand up', I'd like to say that it has nothing to do with us not knowing about number, that's just your (unjustified) intellectual snobbery talking.

It's that in the first case we prefer to use notional agreement (which I think is being called synesis here), rather than the formal agreement that is preferred by Americans. Neither is more correct than the other; it's just a different way of thinking.

And for singular they, I happen to think it's a lot more elegant than any of the alternatives:he/she, he or she, alternating he and she. And 'he' when gender is unknown is simply not acceptable nowadays. Again in the UK singular they is absolutely normal and is used in government publications, for example passport application forms. And not everyone in the US despises it either:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-onlanguage-t.html

These arguments of 'my English is better than your English' are frankly ridiculous and get us absolutely nowhere apart from pissing off the other side. And endlessly parroting rules without thinking about how language actually works doesn't help much either. We have in English an incredibly rich and diverse language. Why not enjoy it for what it is?

@Les R - I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on these borough / burgh pronunciations - Middlesbrough, in North Yorkshire, is not only definitely pronounced with three syllables, it's spelt with with three syllables - it's brough, not borough. And as a native of Edinburgh, I can tell you it's usually pronounced something more like Ed'nbrugh - about two and a half syllables; there's usually a glottal stop after the 'd'. Only very posh people (and possible the English) would use four syllables. Just listen to the pronunciation on Wikipedia, which is spot on.

As she most obviously is an author the present perfect version ('has always wanted') doesn't make an awful lot of sense, unless it was taken from some interview with her before her first book was published. Like the questioner, I think 'be' here really means 'become', as in 'She wants to be a doctor when she grows up'. Although I usually find myself in agreement with porsche, I don't go along with the 'continue being' argument.

And I agree that the past simple version sounds as though she's either no longer with us, or that it never happened - 'She always wanted to be an author, but circumstances didn't allow it.' Considering she is one, and very much alive, it sounds a bit strange to me.

Past perfect (had always wanted) is usually used together with past simple to show a 'past before the past', so it would definitely make sense in a context like 'she had always wanted to be an author, so she enrolled on a creative writing course'. But if you accept the argument that 'be' in this context is more like 'become', then that 'be' has already been accomplished in the past, so the past perfect version would in fact be the most appropriate, because her wanting is in the past. Once you've got something you don't need to want it any longer.

@Bart - Fascinated to know where you did your research. I've just checked ten dictionaries, and 'text' is listed as a verb in all but one of them. In any case we also have the noun 'texting', which as a gerund form must have originally come from a verb. New verbs in English are invariably regular, so I'm afraid your 'put, put, put' argument is not really appropriate.

Personally, I can't understand why anyone would have a problem with 'texted, let alone feel guilty about using it (@lush) .

Seeing some people want to try and analyse this from a grammatical point of view, how about this: we use a lot of adjectives that have been formed from the past participles of verbs - interested, tired etc. Many of us say 'I'm done' to mean 'I've finished', I can't really see what's so wrong with saying 'I was sat' instead of 'I was sitting' (and it's a long time since I've heard past continuous/progressive called imperfect!).

I know several educated Northerners with a keen interest in language, who don't speak in dialect, but for whom this 'sat' is quite normal, so that you could almost say it was part of Standard Northern England English, as much as the long u as in oop (up) North is. After all, we have Standard Scottish English, why shouldn't they have Standard Northern English.

Oxford Dictionaries online say 'Originally only in dialect, it is now common in British (though not US) English' (although they do call it informal and not part of standard English.). But then as a distinguished linguist wrote recently on Language Log - 'informal is normal'.

Personally I find it rather an attractive expression and I don't really understand why there is all this fuss about a little local idiosyncrasy.

British English, and especially the BBC, has seen a great deal of democratisation in the last four decades, and the more of it the better. So called BBC English was only ever spoken by a small minority of the population anyway. If you want to find a standard British English nowadays, Estuary English probably has rather a better claim than BBC English. After all BBC English was itself once simply a local dialect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estuary_English

In the UK most of us use 'further' for everything, as Fowler, who disapproved of this new rule, predicted. For more details, you can read my post:

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/q-further-or-farther-british.html

@Les R - Being British, I was as surprised as you, but I think you missed something - they are only interchangeable for the meaning 'make certain that something happens'. What's more, not all Americans accept that they are interchangeable even then. But it's certainly not as cut and dried as it is in BrE. And this interchangeability doesn't apply to the meaning of take out insurance (or assurance), there only insure (or assure) will do, whether you're in the UK or the US.

I don't think this has much to do with Noah, he had been long dead before this controversy surfaced. But why, pray, should he be infamous? I don't use American spelling, but it must be admitted it has some logic to it. More importantly, he deliberately set out to provide Americans with their own variety of English, a thoroughly laudable enterprise for the new country that it was at the time. If I was American I would be proud of him. Admittedly the famous Third Edition caused a bit of a rumpus in the US, although according to Wikipedia it was well received in the UK. And for anyone interested in how standard English is really used, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage is one of the best reference books I've ever bought, and it's all freely available on Google Books.

But I'm from Edinburgh, and we've got Chambers. Well, we used to before it moved to London. Chambers 20th Century used to be my favourite dictionary, but I don't find the online version quite as good.

Sorry, the boot bit should have been addressed to Jasper (who I think is American), not you. He seemed a bit puzzled about 'boot'. And I'm not sure you're right; we know a lot of American English (from Hollywood etc), but I don't think Americans are so aware of British English. I sometimes see standard features of British English being treated as mistakes by commenters on US websites. For example - 'The government are' (standard usage in British newspapers), rather than 'The government is', 'learnt' (perfectly standard in BrE) instead of 'learned'.

As has been said above, the verb 'be' is a copular or linking verb, so doesn't take an object, but what is variously called a subject complement or subject predicate, just as they take predicative adjectives rather than adverbs - she is pretty, but she sings prettily.

In theory that means they should take subject form pronouns - I, he, she etc. But hardly anyone speaks like that, if indeed they ever did. We seem to be very reluctant to use subject pronouns when they are not followed by a verb. 'Hi Mum, it's me' is normal standard English. 'Hi Mum, it is I' would be hopelessly formal. And notice that 'it's I' just wouldn't work.

It's the same with non-linking verbs - 'Who said that?' - 'Not me'. - Nobody would say 'Not I' - well, hardly anybody. And if we find 'not me' too informal there's a neutral version - 'I didn't'

The problem is that some people seem to think that formal English is standard English when most people rarely use it. As a prominent linguist said recently on Language Log - 'Informal is normal'

If anyone's interested I've written about this (for foreign learners) at:
http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2011/10/personal-pronouns-subject-or-object.html

@Les R
flat - apartment. Boot and bonnet are both to do with cars, boot - trunk, bonnet - hood.

But surprisingly he may have a point about 'ensure'. It's not a Briticism, but the insistence on differentiating between insure and ensure does seem to be British. MWDEU quotes Websters Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary - "Ensure, insure, assure are interchangeable in many contexts where they indicate the making certain or inevitable of an outcome ..."

http://books.google.com/books?id=2yJusP0vrdgC&pg=PA399

Just thought I'd make a language point before this turns into the History Channel. A propos, ironically, I've just been listening to an episode of the BBC comedy series Steptoe and Son. On a visit to the the battlefields of Flanders, old man Steptoe meets an American who asks him if his medals are from the '17-'18 war, and later says 'We
saved you in the First World War and in the '42-'45 war.

The episode is on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zum97ghIEw and the section in question is at 20.00. The French get involved as well. All the stupid old prejudices come out, but in a rather funnier way than the conversation above.