Haf and have

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 11:58 AM 3/25/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>At 11:44 AM -0500 3/25/03, Mark A Mandel wrote:
>>On Mon, 24 Mar 2003, Duane Campbell wrote:
>>
>>#It seems that when "have" is used to mean "need" -- as in, "I have to go
>>#to the bathroom" -- it is pronounced "haf". But the same speaker using
>>#"have" as perfect tense or when meaning "possess" the "v" is vocalized. I
>>#have even heard, "I haf to have this."
>>#
>>#Am I imagining this? Is this one word becoming two distinct words by
>>#meaning and pronunciation? Am I just a dilettante observing something
>>#that has been studied to death?
>>
>>I've been aware of this for many years. ISTM that the regressive
>>devoicing originated in lexicalized "have to" /'h ae ft@/, as a purely
>>phonological phenomenon owing to the loss of word boundary, and is now
>>so strongly attached to this combination that it persists even when
>>stress and prosody create a break, e.g.,
>>         I really HAVE to go to the bathroom
>>  with high-falling tone on "have", and the same duration for
>>         real    ly
>>  and
>>         have    to
>>  piecewise.
>But it hasta be lexical/morphological, not purely phonological, given
>the voicing in e.g.
>
>There are some books I have to read (but I don't have HAFTA read
>them, so I'll go out to a movie instead)
>vs.
>There are some papers I hafta grade (so I can't go out to a movie)
>
>or
>What do you have to eat?   (i.e. have on hand)
>vs.
>What do you hafta eat?  (given your new diet)
>
>On some accounts, there's a trace in the first member of each of
>these pairs, but in any case they involve not the lexical item
>"hafta" = 'must' (more or less), but real main verb "have".  I'll bet
>Arnold can give us references on where this is all discussed in the
>literature.
>
>Larry

In a talk given at OU recently by Brian Joseph of OSU (we ARE different
schools), Brian noted the spread of innovations based on variant surface
forms like 'have'/'hafta', in this case a new gerund form 'hafing to'.  The
underlying form re-emerges in a separated construction like "You have only
to ask and it is yours."  In light of Mark's example, we might now add that
'have' is not stressed in Brian's example, and therefore [haev] is
used.  But other lexical chunks like 'useta' and 'sposta' were noted long
ago by Labov, as I recall.

Enid is right when she says ESL learners are taught the 'haf/have'
distinction, but it's not easy for them.  I assume [haev#tu] is preferred
in British English, as in "I have to have it"?  Or is it changing there too?

Beverly Flanigan
Dept. of Linguistics
Ohio University