Re: Inversion for subjunctive (was "Get" passive)

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 7:48 PM, Adnan Majid <dsamajid@...> wrote:
> It may be that "got" is transitioning in usage from a past participle to a
> present tense verb, equivalent to "have." In some dialects of American
> English, one may rarely hear, for instance, "he gots a car."
Well, "gots" is distinctly AAVE, but "got" can definitely be used as
present tense in many non-AAVE 'lects.  I suspect this is due to
reanalysis of contractions such as "What you got?"  (originally <
"What have you got?", reinterpreted as "What do you got?") and
past-tense statements such as "I got a new car!" ("I received a new
car!") as resultatives ("I have a new car!").

This is quite at the forefront of my mind right now because even as
I'm trying to explain/defend this usage on here, I'm desperately
trying to train it out of my 5-year-old, who insists upon using "got"
instead of "have".  As I said, it doesn't come naturally to me, or to
my wife, so we're not sure where he got (!) it, but we'd rather he
learn the more socially acceptable forms first and colloquialize
voluntarily later than try to do it the other way around.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>