dialect in novels

[Victoria Neufeldt]

I believe that the short written forms "gonna" and "gotta" are synonymous
with their respective standard written forms.  The equivalent in standardese
of "I'm gonna go to London" is "I'm going to go to London," not "I'm going
to London." (You need two "go's" in the second sentence as well, since
"gonna" means "going to", not "going to go".)  And again, the standard
written form of "I gotta go to London" would be "I've [or I have] got to go
to London."  (The "have" or "-'ve" is actually often included in the
fast-speech version as well.  On the other hand, the statement "I got to go
to London" is in fact ambiguous without more context, because it could just
as easily be intended to mean "I (-'ve) got to go to London."  You could
disambiguate it by adding either "yesterday" or "tomorrow", as appropriate.

Victoria

Victoria Neufeldt
1533 Early Drive
Saskatoon, Sask.
S7H 3K1
Canada


> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
> Of Mark Odegard
> Sent: Friday, February 23, 2001 1:15 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: dialect in novels
>
> In speech, 'gonna' and 'gotta' are lexically distinct from 'going to' and
> 'got to'. These spellings, while unofficial, reflect actual usage, and in
> the case of 'gotta', is disambiguative.
>
> I'm gonna go to London = I intend to go to London
> I'm going to London = I am travelling to London
>
> I gotta go to London = I must go to London (modal auxiliary)
> I got to go to London = I had an opportunity to go to London
>
> 'Usta', as in 'used to' vs. 'usta' is not quite as fully established.
>
> A box he usta store stuff in (formerly and no longer: modal)
> A box he used to store stuff in
>
>
>
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