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Exploring Stative Possessives Have Got and Got in American English

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Aino Tuomola Is it got some words to it? Exploring Stative Possessives Have Got and Got in American English Aino Tuomola, 38775 Pro gradu-avhandling i engelska språket och litteraturen Handledare: Brita Wårvik Fakulteten för humaniora, psykologi och teologi Åbo Akademi 2019 Aino Tuomola ÅBO AKADEMI – FACULTY OF ARTS, PSYCHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY Master’s thesis abstract Subject: English Language and Literature Author: Aino Tuomola Title: “Is it got some words to it?”: Exploring Stative Possessives Have got and Got in American English Supervisor: Brita Wårvik Abstract: Stative possessive constructions have gone through immense grammatical changes over the past four centuries, from have to have got, and finally to a stative possessive main verb got. One of the main purposes of this present study is to explain the evolution of the stative possessives have got and got. Further aims of this thesis include examining and mapping the prescriptive grammars surrounding these verbs, as well as introducing, analysing, and comparing the uses of the two possessives. Data for the study consist of three different parts. Firstly, previous research on the development of the possessives is reviewed, discussed, and used as a starting point for introducing a new development hypothesis. Secondly, prescriptive grammars and previous research on the grammar of have got and got are used to formulate and compile a prescriptive grammar. Finally, data extracted from The Corpus of Contemporary American English are used to introduce descriptive grammars for the two possessives, as well as to compare their individual uses. The results support the view that we can regard the development of both possessive have got and got to be due to the process of grammaticalisation, with starting-point in the conventionalisation of a conversational implicature. The results also show that coherent prescriptive grammars for the two possessives are extremely difficult to form at this time because the prescriptive views are so many and often appear to disagree with one another. Moreover, the corpus findings reveal that the descriptive uses of have got and got are partly in accordance with prescriptive views, but that divergences exist among certain grammatical properties. Finally, the results show that the uses of have got and got are in many ways similar, while essential differences also exist. This thesis looks at the present state of possessives have got and got in light of their diachronic developmental paths and documents language change in progress in North American English. In conclusion, it is hypothesized that the possessive constructions continue to change and develop and thus there is a need for further, continuing research on the matter, including sociolinguistic research, in order to gain a wider view on the topic. Keywords: semantic change, grammaticalisation, corpus linguistics, descriptive grammar, stative possession, possessive verbs, have got, got Date: 11.11.2019 Pages: 134 i Aino Tuomola Table of contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. i Table of contents .............................................................................................................. ii List of tables ..................................................................................................................... v List of figures ................................................................................................................... v 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 1.1. Justification and research questions ................................................................. 1 1.2. Disposition and clarifications ........................................................................... 2 2. Developmental background ...................................................................................... 3 2.1. The development of the main verb get ............................................................. 3 2.2. The development of the stative possessive have got – an introduction ............ 5 2.2.1. Got-insertion ............................................................................................. 6 2.2.2. Have got as a conversational implicature ................................................. 9 2.2.3. The grammaticalisation process – a way to stative possessive got?....... 12 3. Addressing the phenomenon .................................................................................. 18 3.1. Have got – a multi-word unit .......................................................................... 18 3.2. Syntactic analyses ........................................................................................... 20 4. Grammatical properties .......................................................................................... 23 4.1. Grammatical properties of have got ............................................................... 23 4.1.1. Iterativity ................................................................................................ 24 4.1.2. Modals .................................................................................................... 25 4.1.3. Other tenses ............................................................................................ 25 4.1.4. Imperatives ............................................................................................. 27 4.1.5. Tags and short answers ........................................................................... 27 4.1.6. Infinitives, participles, and ing-forms..................................................... 28 4.1.7. Other remarks ......................................................................................... 29 4.2. Grammatical properties of stative possessive got........................................... 29 4.2.1. Do-support .............................................................................................. 31 4.2.2. Tenses, gerund, infinitives, and modals ................................................. 32 5. Material and methods ............................................................................................. 33 5.1. Corpus linguistics ........................................................................................... 34 5.2. Material ........................................................................................................... 35 5.3. Methodology ................................................................................................... 36 5.3.1. Concordance selections .......................................................................... 37 5.3.2. Search sequences .................................................................................... 38 5.3.3. Exclusions ............................................................................................... 38 ii Aino Tuomola 6. Results .................................................................................................................... 40 6.1. Have got in The Corpus of Contemporary American English ....................... 40 6.1.1. Iterative have got .................................................................................... 40 6.1.2. Modals with have got ............................................................................. 42 6.1.3. Different tenses of have got .................................................................... 43 6.1.4. Tags with a have got anchor ................................................................... 45 6.1.5. Do-support with have got ....................................................................... 45 6.1.6. Suffixes and non-finite structures of have got ........................................ 46 6.1.7. Ain’t got .................................................................................................. 48 6.2. Got in The Corpus of Contemporary American English ................................ 49 6.2.1. Iterative got ............................................................................................. 49 6.2.2. Modals with got ...................................................................................... 51 6.2.3. Tags with a got anchor............................................................................ 51 6.2.4. Do-support with got ................................................................................ 52 6.2.5. Suffixes and non-finite constructions of got........................................... 56 6.2.6. Got with an auxiliary be ......................................................................... 57 6.2.7. Interrogative got ..................................................................................... 58 7. Comparing the prescriptive and descriptive grammars .......................................... 59 7.1. Have got .......................................................................................................... 60 7.1.1. Continuous aspect of have got and iterative use .................................... 60 7.1.2. Have got with modal verbs ..................................................................... 61 7.1.3. Have got in other tenses.......................................................................... 63 7.1.4. Have got anchor and tags........................................................................ 64 7.1.5. Non-finite have got and suffixes ...........................................................
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