implied obligation?

[metal56]

with the added idea that she may have just given up to their pestering and bought choco milk.

Yes, she stated that in the topic post. She said she had "caved in".

[Andrew Patterson]

Juan wrote:

It's the same "have". It's not a pun and the double or triple take is not great. So what does the "have" of "I have to go" really mean? Is there a holy grail combining possession, obligation and experience?

It hasn't completed this transformation yet but it is moving moving that way. The core meaning probably is possession but it IS different enough to pun.

Imagine Amanda Barry as Cleo uttering these lines in a Carry On film as Kenneth Connor moves in towards her. Unbenownst to her he has fallen into a cess-pit:

Have some olives.
Have some grapes.
Have some dates. Phew!
Have a bath!

Or Sid James as Sidney Ruff Diamond realising that Joan Simms as Lady Ruff Diamond has just arrived while he is in the middle of entertaining Angela Douglas as Princess Jelly :

I have diamonds.
I have pearls
I have rubies.
I have to go!

See what I mean?

The extent to which you can pun is a good indicator of how far meaning has changed.

[metal56]

<The extent to which you can pun is a good indicator of how far meaning has changed.>

Over the centuries, there are generally four accepted stages of change regarding "have":

From "have + obj + to + V" to "have to + V (+ object).

Stage 1. have is a full verb meaning ‘to possess, have in possession’ (still in use)

Stage 2. the semantics of have are considerably weakened; meanings of possession and obligation or duty exist side-by-side (van der Gaaf 1931: 181-182).

Stage 3. the possessive semantics of have are completely bleached; it expresses duty or obligation exclusively. Have is no longer a full verb, but has been (partially) grammaticalized (van der Gaaf 1931: 184; Visser 1969: 1478). The order of the construction has been transposed to have + infinitive + object.

Stage 4. have, now grammaticalized as an auxiliary of modality, begins to occur with intransitive infinitives. Kirchner (1952: 381-382) believes that this construction develops out of the earlier construction with a transitive infinitive, but Visser (1969: 1485) questions this development.
Source:

THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF QUASIMODAL HAVE TO IN ENGLISH
Laurel J. Brinton
University of British Columbia

[JuanTwoThree]

Nevertheless it's not a play on wordS, it's a play with one word.

Sometimes we need to ask a layperson; we may differentiate between "I am John", "I am typing" and "I am sleepy" but it's just three things I am.

Despite the differences in grammar I would say there is a core meaning to the various haves. English is by no means the only language to blur distinctions between necessity, obligation. possession and experience. Our Indo-European minds seem to lump them together to various extents.

[metal56]

Despite the differences in grammar I would say there is a core meaning to the various haves.

What would that be?

[JuanTwoThree]

Something like "carry". Or "bear".

Carry around as a memory or experience: present perfect.

As a burden of responsibility: obligation.

As a possession.

[metal56]

Something like "carry". Or "bear".

Carry around as a memory or experience: present perfect.

As a burden of responsibility: obligation.

As a possession.

That's certainly been suggested many times by various linguists.

[JuanTwoThree]

The fraction of this

http://kiri.ling.cam.ac.uk/roberts/history.rtf

that I understood is often relevant.

[metal56]

The fraction of this

http://kiri.ling.cam.ac.uk/roberts/history.rtf

that I understood is often relevant.

Wow! That's a biggie. Can you direct us to the fraction you find relevant?

[JuanTwoThree]

Page 16 on Romance futures.

Basically Latin habere "own/possess " also became a future suffix with a modal sense (shades of "have to go").

EG Latin "amabo" was replaced by the early equivalent of French J'aimerai : that "ai" comes from habere. So a periphrasis took over from a future tense and then became a future tense.

As well "habere" became the auxiliary of perfect tenses.

Very close to the three ideas: You can own a thing, own a memory and own a future necessity/obligation.

Lots of other languages throw some equivalent of something like "hold" into the pot. Non standard Spanish uses "I hold always thought" as "I have always thought" (Tengo siempre pensado) and idiomatic French, IIRC, prefers Je tiens to J'ai. Spanish uses "carry" for some perfect ideas: "How long do you carry married?" (¿Cuanto tiempo llevas casado?)
for "How long have you been married?"

It's not new or original but it's very convincing: Cup your hands. It's a metaphor for what you have, for what you have done and for what you have to do. Same "have".

[Andrew Patterson]

Something like "carry". Or "bear".
Carry around as a memory or experience: present perfect.
As a burden of responsibility: obligation.
As a possession.

"Bear" is probably nearer to the mark. What you bear only becomes a burden when it involves difficulties or responsibilities. Having something can imply this but it can also imply quite the opposite.

[Andrew Patterson]

Nevertheless it's not a play on wordS, it's a play with one word.

Sometimes we need to ask a layperson; we may differentiate between "I am John", "I am typing" and "I am sleepy" but it's just three things I am.

Despite the differences in grammar I would say there is a core meaning to the various haves. English is by no means the only language to blur distinctions between necessity, obligation. possession and experience. Our Indo-European minds seem to lump them together to various extents.

And the core meang of "be" may not be "exist". I can't decide whether your assertion or my is right or whether both are.

[metal56]

"Bear" is probably nearer to the mark. What you bear only becomes a burden when it involves difficulties or responsibilities. Having something can imply this but it can also imply quite the opposite.

I agree. In fact, the other day, I saw this real-life example:

I have my ageing aunt to look after, but it's not a burden, because I love her.

[Stephen Jones]

Incidentally, anybody ever wondered why the infinitive and participle forms are 'be', 'being' and 'been' but there is no sign of either phoneme in the inflected forms?

[Andrew Patterson]

Incidentally, anybody ever wondered why the infinitive and participle forms are 'be', 'being' and 'been' but there is no sign of either phoneme in the inflected forms?

The answer is simple. It's a mixture of 3 different verbs:

O.E. beon, beom, bion "be, exist, come to be, become," from P.Gmc. *beo-, *beu- from PIE base *bheu-, *bhu- "grow, come into being, become," and in addition to Eng. it yielded Ger. present first and second person sing. (bin, bist, from O.H.G. bim "I am," bist "thou art"), L. perf. tenses of esse (fui "I was," etc.), O.C.S. byti "be," Gk. phu- "become," O.Ir. bi'u "I am," Lith. bu'ti "to be," Rus. byt' "to be," etc. It is also behind Skt. bhavah "becoming," bhavati "becomes, happens," bhumih "earth, world."

O.E. is, from Gmc. stem *es- (cf. O.H.G., Ger., Goth. ist, O.N. es, er), from PIE *es-ti- (cf. Skt. asti, Gk. esti, L. est, Lith. esti, O.C.S. jesti), from base *es- "to be." O.E. lost the final -t-.

are from O.E. earun (Mercian), aron (Northumbrian). Also from O.N. cognates. In 17c., began to replace be, ben as first person plural present indicative in standard English. The only non-dialectal survival of be in this sense is the powers that be. But in southwest England, we be (in Devonshire us be) remains non-standard idiom as a contradictory positive ("You people aren't speaking correct English." "Oh, yes we be!"). Aren't, contraction of are not, is first recorded 1794.

This mixing of verb stems known as suppelation. The same goes for go went and gone.

By the way, the word "Sin" is related to German "sind" although ultimately though it doesn't look like it, "sin is related to "is". See above.