dialect in novels

[Natalie Maynor]

MVSCHNUR wrote:

> I think the "have" is superfluous. "Got" means, or should mean, "I obtained
> it", ie. I didn't have it, so I obtained [got] it. Thus, by getting it, I
> "have" it, is understood.

I'm not sure what you mean by "should mean."  Something means what it
means.  And language is full of redundancies.  Isn't the "ed" on "walked"
redundant in "I walked home yesterday"?  The "yesterday" makes the past
time understood, so we don't need the "ed."

On the question of "got," is our US use of "gotten" on the decline?
I was talking about it in a class recently, mentioning that "gotten"
vanished from British English a long time ago (but "forgotten" is still
used, isn't it?).  I then said our got/gotten contrast can be useful --
"I've gotten a dog" does not mean the same thing as "I've got a dog."
Several students said that they never use "gotten" at all -- that for
that first sentence, they'd say something like "I just got a dog" or
"I got a dog last week."
   --Natalie Maynor (maynor at ra.msstate.edu)