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#38056 08/08/01 09:14 PM
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since we just had a thread on the origins of "used to", how about "have to" and "have got to"? it seems like poor grammar to say "i have to be home by 4pm today" or "i've got to be home by 4pm today", but "I must be home etc." sounds stilted.


#38057 08/08/01 09:56 PM
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You could say "If I'm not home by 4 PM, I'm gonna get what Paddy gave the drum." That's not stilted, but you'd have to be tilted for punishment to be carried out. How can one discuss an idiom without sounding idiotic?


#38058 08/08/01 10:00 PM
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Of course, there is a problem about who is administering correction to whom. There is an old story about the guy who every time his wife misbehaved, he set out to spank her. But every time he got her skirt up, he forgot what he was mad about.


#38059 08/09/01 12:26 AM
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Tengo que preguntarla si habla Espanol.


#38060 08/09/01 12:56 AM
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Necesito preguntarle algo tambien...

Como se dice touche?


#38061 08/09/01 04:26 AM
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What is ungrammatical about "I have to be home by 4" or "I've got to be home by 4"? Both sound perfectly OK by me, and different from "I must be home by 4."

To vary the example a little, I think if you say "I must go now" it's some sort of self-imposed obligation to go, whereas if you say "I have to go now" there is some sort of external restraint insisting you go. "I've got to go" sounds more emphatic or desperate (I imagine a four year old with crossed legs).


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#38062 08/09/01 10:33 AM
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>Both sound perfectly OK by me

Agreed Bingley. 'Have' has many uses - the ones I know follow:

It can act as a main verb:

1) She has a beautiful house.

or as a modal:

2) We have got to go back some time.

or a catenate (joining) verb:

3) One has to go to Paris to find decent clothes (grin)
or "I have to be home by four."

I don't really get all that 'auxiliary verb' crap you read about. I mean, a modal verb is an auxiliary verb - a modal auxiliary, right? The prescriptivist and descriptivist grammarians have a field day debating modal verbs, but I horribly under qualified for that. I'll stop there.

Aside: anyone know where 'to have a field day' comes from. A relic from the Great War?


#38063 08/09/01 12:00 PM
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Tengo que preguntarla si habla Espanol.


Lo mismo yo iba mencionar.


#38064 08/09/01 02:11 PM
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What is ungrammatical about "I have to be home by 4" or "I've got to be home by 4"?

i misstated myself. i didn't mean to suggest that it is poor grammar, when this quite obviously *is acceptable usage. what i intended to say was that it seems strange usage of the word "have"; to my [limited] knowledge, none of the romance languages would use the verb root "avoir/tener/etc" to imply an imperative, but rather solely to indicate possession.

my query was simply how "have" came into this particular usage, not whether or not it's now grammatically correct. (sorry!)


#38065 08/09/01 02:30 PM
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none of the romance languages would use the verb root "avoir/tener/etc" to imply an imperative

Inselpeter y yo tenemos qué desavenirnos. The use of habere/tenere and their modern descendants as markers of necessity are quite common in Vulgar Latin and the Romance languages as see our posts above (or below for Threadnodists). Without digging too deeply, English is the only non-Romance language that I can think of wherein this is the case.


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