Which is grammatical correct "woke to the..." or "awoke to the..."

Question

For instance, should I say:

She woke to the rattling sound of the alarm clock.

or

She awoke to the rattling sound of the alarm clock.

(If both are correct, which one is more commonly used?)

Answer 1

I think that the "a+verb" form is restricted to intransitive uses and that the basic form ("verb") is used mainly in transitive contexts.

I awoke.

The dog awakes.

vs.

I woke the dog. (transitive)

The dog will wake me when he barks. (transitive)

The logic here is that the other 'a verbs' in English are transitive:

I amuse myself.

Not

I amuse.*

This happens with the "be+verb" verbs in English, too:

I bemoaned my fate.

I moaned every day and night for the last month.

I moaned my fate.* (wrong)

I bemoaned every day and night for the last month.* (wrong)

Many of the 'be-' verbs have the 'be-' form only (you can 'bewitch' somebody, but you can't 'witch'; same with 'besmirch') and all of these seem to be, in following the pattern, transitive only.

The twist is that "wake" seems a bit irregular: while you can't use 'awake' transitively, most people seem to accept using 'wake' either transitively or intransitively. Perhaps this is because there are no phrasal verbs with 'awake', but there is with 'wake', and phrasal verbs allow for 'elastic' use: e.g., I woke up, vs. I woke up the neighborhood.

Thus, contrary to the 'rule' above,

I woke.

seems to be acceptable. (But not *"I awoke the dog.")

By the way, these 'a-' and 'be-' verbs are some of the most 'English' of verbs, not being based on foreign borrowings, and so the rules involved (so far as they still exist or are still followed) are probably really old, too.

Answer 2

Both of these sentences are grammatically correct.

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/notorious/wake.htm