Re: USAGE: "gotten" (was: Latin) verb examples and tense meanings

Ed Heil wrote:
>
> So essentially "I've got money" is more or less synonymous with "I
> have money," and both are present tense in sense despite the fact that
> the first is present perfect in form.
Exactly.  Which is why the -'ve is sometimes dropped.  You'll hear both
I've got money, and I got money.  In fact, it seems that "got" is
sometimes, by children, at least, analyzed as a present tense - I've
heard forms like "Do you got" and "I don't got" and "he gots", but only
by children.

> Whereas "I've gotten money" is in fact a present perfect in sense as
> well as form.
Exactly.

> I'm wondering whether there is a sense distinction between "I have
> money" and "I've got money" now.
There is, but I'm not sure exactly what it is.  "Have got" can be used
in a sort of very-near-future sense, e.g., when I used to play baseball
(for a single year), when there were two people who were in place to
catch the ball, one person would shout "I('ve) got it!", so that you
didn't have two people running for the same ball (and running into each
other), but "I have it!" would sound unnatural unless you actually had
it in your hand.  Of course, this might just be an idiolectal
distinction, I'm not sure.

I suspect that "got" will eventually replace "have" in the present
tense, in America at any rate, to the point of saying things like "will
got", thus creating suppletion between the present _got_ and the past
_had_.  Perhaps that might be

> Maybe the former is a bit more formal than the latter too.
Definitely.  "Have got" is definitely informal.

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