dialect in novels

[Dennis R. Preston]

>Funny, I thought it was the "have" that was superfluous.


dInIs





>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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--
Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736