Teacher Discussion Forums

Interesting exchange on "Ed" , the programme where a lawyer works from the bowling alley he owns:

"I gotta go"

"So do I"

So on the one hand we have the possibility of an "emergent modal" but the question of its auxiliary is up in the air.

http://scholar.google.es/scholar?q=%22g ... Buscar&lr=

Is the 'do' referring to 'gotta' or to an imagined phrase with the same meaning "I have to go".

"I gotta go"
"So must I"
would also appear grammatical in this context, as would
"I gotta go"
"So have I"

It seems there is something interesting going on here but not necessarily what the author thinks.

It may be emergent, but I bet it won't emerge.

Well there are 195,000,000 hits for gotta on Yahoo, so it's not exactly uncommon.

Mind you, usage hasn't settled on either "don't gotta" or "ain't gotta". The lyrics for "I ain't gotta tell you" contain the line "I don't gotta tell you" but those for "Don't gotta go home" include the words "You ain't gotta go home".

Clearly "don't gotta" is more interesting because by no means could it be described as a type of phonetic transcription of any standard form, unlike "ain't gotta" which just might be, and anyway has been around for ages.

One of the tests for "is it an X" is to use something in a parallel structure.

So for modals we can say "He can, will and should go". We couldn't put "gotta" into a list of that sort. However, maybe it is just because it is slangy.

"He coulda and ought to have gone" sounds odd, for example.

There is no real sharp divide between dialect and slang. Once you start using things that sound slangy, the rules of grammar start to change. However, sometimes items lose the slangy feel, in which case it might fully "emerge".

Maybe that is a much under-used principle, come to think of it.

Maybe we could say, for example: "In English a double negative indicates a positive - as logic dictates - unless there is an overt marker of some sort indicating slang or dialect"

JuanTwoThree wrote:
"I gotta go"

"So do I"

I wonder whether this parallels the BrE/AmE difference you sometimes hear in the possessive sense of "have" / "have got"

— "I have a dream."
— "So do I." (AmE)
— "So have I." (BrE)

MrP

My BrE uses "do" as the auxiliary of main verb "have". I suppose I occasionally say "I haven't a clue" or things like that.

This makes interesting re-reading:

http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=2396

Why "gotta" contrasted with have to? Why not "hafta"?

O.K, google hits and all that, but in spoken terms maybe the latter is more common.

If gotta were actually a modal, then it should be:

I gotta go.
So gotta I!

So it seems to have a lot of emerging to do. (although " I must go" only likes "me too!", so must is a funny beast as well). The example "Don't gotta" would imply that "gotta" is not a modal, since we can't say "don't should" etc, I would have thought, rather it would imply that is just a slang alternative for "have to", as do the other examples, apart form "aint gotta", in which I guess "gotta" is a slang alternative for "got to". So maybe "gotta" can play both roles.

Anyway, if a discussion of grammar is to include all foreign slang items that you yourself have never uttered, where will it end? I'm not sure that "don't gotta" would class as general informal English.

woodcutter, your last post does seem to start by being an exercise in the blindingly obvious, if you don't mind my saying so. The point about "hafta" is that it is just a phonetic-like transcription of "have to" whose auxiliary is not in any doubt. "Gotta" on the other hand is being treated by some as a semi-modal with a difference of opinion as to what its auxiliary is. Some people are plumping for "don't" over "ain't", another phonetic-like spelling. Which is interesting. If you like that sort of thing.

I don't see the problem with "So must I" personally.

So "slang", whatever you mean by that, is not worthy of study? What do you mean by "foreign slang"? "Gotta" is certainly used by native speakers as a semi-modal, with that interesting diversity of opinion about its auxiliary.

Should you only study and be interested in your own dialect and sociolect? How limiting. It would close every university dialect studies department in the world. Can't I even be interested in American English?

Finally, I do agree that "don't gotta" is not informal English. So what?

I just added a sentence to the last post to emphasize my main point -
it just seems to be a slang alternative to "have to" or "got to". I don't mean to say it isn't interesting, and I'm not trying to rain on any of these discussions. I just keep trying to convince you all, without success, that taking no notice of whether you are dealing with standard English or not when dealing with many topics will only lead to confusion - and especially when we are dealing only with American slang we need to say so, and limit our grammatical conclusions to the realm of U.S slang. Just as I think we need to be more aware of the assumptions (or confusions) underlying the parsing of sentences in order to get somewhere. What does it mean to wonder whether something is a semi-modal? Are the criteria for semi-modality strong/meaningful enough enough to make this worthwhile?

I would say "gotta" is also only a phonetic representation when it replaces "got to", so perhaps the fact that it can replace "have to" is what makes the difference. And "have got to". All right, maybe my comment was a bit unnecessary.

It is odd that it can take "ain't" as a negative auxiliary I suppose, it doesn't seem to make much sense. Maybe it is just analogy with "ain't gonna". I still think though, that at this level of informality, things are always much more unstable.