grammaticality - Is "I am sat" bad English?


Is "I am sat" bad English? I believe it is incorrect and instead either the present continuous



I am sitting



or the predicate adjective



I am seated



should be used.


I hear this quite often, however, and ultimately usage overrules formality. Does anybody know where this originated or how to describe it grammatically?



Answer



Forms like "I am sat here" and "they were stood there" are common in certain dialects of English (such as Yorkshire, where I live), but are not regarded as standard English, which prefers "I am sitting here" and "they were standing there".


They are examples of stative verbs, which in many languages have a different grammar from other verbs, but exactly how the form arises I don't know. [Edit: also, they don't pattern with the class of verbs usually called "stative" in English, in that they do have continuous forms: "I am sitting" etc.]


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