dialect in novels

[Bob Fitzke]

My sense of "have got" is that the "got" is usually superfluous.

Bob

Mark Odegard wrote:
>
> >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
>
> I may be in a minority, or merely may be a little ahead of the stream, but
> 'gotta' works as a modal auxiliary. The sense is essentially that of 'must'.
> "I gotta go" is not "I got to go".
>
> As written English, "I have got to go" is the one that's ambiguous to me.
>
> With 'got', there are some things going on that I cannot explain, but would
> dearly like to know. The British, so I gather, are puzzled by some AmE
> usages of 'got'. Have/has seems to no longer be necessary before certain
> such usages of 'got'.
>
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