WHOA! I never said that "“have got” does not mean “have,” "!!!
rkts asserted in an early post that
rkts then continued by asserting that, while Cecil’s discussion established a difference between “have got” and “have gotten”, that “have gotten” could in all instances be replaced with the simpler “have”. Notice that this is quite the opposite of the assertion we now have before us, that “have got” and “have” have simultaneous meanings at times.
In response to this post, I asserted that there was a noticeable difference between the meanings of “have”, “have got” and “have gotten” when used in the sense Cecil wrote about. This was an assertion that the statement by rkts was wrong. It was not, nor ever was it meant to be, an assertion that “have got” isn’t or couldn’t be used in the sense usually conveyed by “have.”
To recapitulate: I disagree with the statement of rkts in the first post made by him/her in this thread. Nothing else should be inferred.
No I didn’t. I said it could be shortened to either “have” or “have got,” preferably the latter, with which it is synonymous. Let me put it in the simplest terms possible:
“Have got” can be used in two completely different senses. One is synonymous with “have,” and in that case “have” should be the preferred expression. The other is synonymous with “have gotten,” and in that case “have got” should (in my opinion) be the preferred expression.
I don’t think “have got” can be used instead of “have gotten”
“have got” means “have”
“have gotten” means “got”
“I have got some bread” can not be read as “I recently aquired some bread”. It means “I posses some bread”. “I recently aquired some bread” would be “I got some bread”.
I guess the only cite I can give is that it is the language that I use every day and I’m a fairly literate person. I suspect that you, being from Texas, do not use “got” to mean “gotten” on a regular basis and maybe are not as familiar with it’s use.
Okay, it looks like people are posting without reading previous posts. (Though you can’t really blame them – who has time?) And people are agreeing with each other without even realizing it, always a rewarding point of an ongoing debate.
To summarize:
“Have got” has TWO meanings. In the present (technically, “present perfect with present meaning”) tense, it means “have.” In the present perfect tense, it has the exact same meaning as “have gotten.”
All of these are correct, standard, non-colloquial usages. (At least, according to dictionaries which describe American English usage.)
There is NO difference in meaning between “have” and “have got” for the present tense, according to dictionaries. And there is NO difference between “have gotten” and “have got” for the present perfect tense, since “gotten” and “got” are both correct forms (in American usage) of the past participle of “get.” (“Got” is also the simple past of “get,” but nobody’s arguing about that. Yet.)
Several people have commented that they understand these various terms differently. Perfectly possible. Statements about “I wouldn’t use that” or “that sounds weird to me” (e.g., in my own postings) reflect personal and possibly regional differences, and certainly some striking differences between American English usage and British English usage. But no-one has presented any evidence to support such claims, that I can see.
So all the statements about what’s “incorrect” don’t seem to be supported. (Arguments about “the language that I use every day” can be interpreted as reflecting at most a regional difference, and are further subject to counter-argument in the form of nit-picking about the spelling of “it’s.”) (insert sideways smiley face.)
And personally, I find arguments from usage manuals, including Fowler’s, to be unconvincing. What gives someone the status to present themselves as an expert? Probably the fact that they have their own axes to grind, and a lot of practice grinding them – which just means that if I agree with them, I’ll cite them, but if I disagree with them, I’ll ignore them (or dismiss them, if I disagree frequently.) And certainly there are more than enough examples of “rule books” arguing for distinctions that are actually invented, and don’t reflect actual usage, either contemporary or over several centuries. (e.g., “should” versus “would,” the campaign against “hopefully,” etc. etc. etc.)
p.s. In the column (remember the column?), Cecil quoted a usage expert as saying,
… most Americans regularly make a very precise distinction between got and gotten. ‘We’ve got ten thousand dollars for laboratory equipment,’ means that the funds are in our possession–we have them. ‘We have gotten ten thousand dollars for laboratory equipment,’ means that we have obtained or acquired this particular sum of money.
Cecil then summarizes this as,
In other words, got means you obtained something in the indefinite past, and gotten means you recently acquired it
But there’s a problem: in the example, “have got” is NOT comparable to “have gotten,” since it’s the present meaning, rather than the present perfect meaning. That is, this has nothing to do with “a distinction between got and gotten.” (So much for usage experts.)
And then Cecil changes the example around, in order to compare “have got” to “have gotten” when describing past activity (i.e., the present perfect meaning). But he’s not talking about the usage expert’s claim any more, and it’s not clear where he gets the distinction that “got means you obtained something in the indefinite past, and gotten means you recently acquired it.” (Especially the “recently” part – where’d that come from? Probably reflects personal preferences…)
And none of this addresses the original question, which was about the difference between “had got” and “had gotten” – that is, the PAST perfect tense of “get.”
Given the education I have now gotten (or have now got) from reading dictionaries about this issue, I now feel sure that there is NO necessary difference between these two forms of the past perfect, since “got” and “gotten” are both acceptable forms of the part participle of “get,” in American usage (and possibly in British usage too – ??) But I’m sure people will disagree vehemently about which is more acceptable, and how they may differ in their connotations, and what well-bred Americans actually say.
And there is NO difference between “have gotten” and “have got” for the present perfect tense, since “gotten” and “got” are both correct forms (in American usage) of the past participle of “get.” (“Got” is also the simple past of “get,” but nobody’s arguing about that. Yet.)
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Ok, I’ll accept that maybe other regions use “have got” to mean “aquired”. Out of curiosity, what regions are these? How does the UK use the term? How does the US use it? I know that NZ and Aus only use it to mean “have”.
I am inclined to think that the popularity of gotten is attributable not to regional differences but to the natural tendency of English speakers to find a past participle that looks the most like a past participle, and to avoid confusion with the present tense “have got” – in other words, to find the simplest, easiest way of saying it. Consequently it sounds to me subtly like an ignorant, colloquial usage (I use “colloquial” loosely here), exhibiting a desire to expand the function of a common, easy word (get) instead of acquire a broader vocabulary. The problem is such that gotten is often used where it is entirely inaccurate simply because it is so loved as an easy way of expressing acquisition and passive action. E.g.,
If gotten were not so conveniently handy, the writer of the above statement (from pnorris’s link) would have had to think of another way of phrasing it, and come up with “may have been inserted”, which is obviously far superior.
So when I say “have got” or “have obtained” whereas others would say “have gotten,” I don’t feel particularly British or American or anything else. I just feel, well, better. Maybe I’m just a snob.
Nevertheless, pnorris, if you are able to find some research on differences among the regional uses of the expression, I would be glad to read it.
In sentences expressing only the acquisition of something, and absolutely nothing else, as in your sentence, then “have got” could naturally be interpreted as meaning “have”, because it basically does mean “have,” in this exceptional case. If you have just got some bread, then you have some bread. It could also be interpreted as meaning “got,” since, if you have got bread, then you got it. Hence you probably wouldn’t use the present perfect at all; as you say, it would only be either “have” or “got.” Rather, the past perfect is used when a further condition exists; and such a further condition will make it clear that the past perfect is being used, and not the present. E.g.,
I have got three of my apples from Mike, and two from Joseph. (I am so creative.)
Or take my previous example, which you apparently didn’t notice:
I have got my groceries at Albertson’s before.
In both of these cases, it would be impossible to replace “have got” with “have”; and to change it to “got” would be to change its meaning.
Now, to be absolutely technical, you could come home one day and say to your family “I have got some bread for us to eat” and intend for it to be interpreted as a present perfect, whereas they interpret it as present. The solution? Fine, say “gotten” if you want to. Personally I would say “bought.”
Make sense now?
I’d say we’ve successfully beaten this topic to death.
Well, from what our British correspondents have said, in the UK you don’t use “gotten” at all – it’s for uncultured Americans and other former colonial low-lifes (ISSF), presumably including the ANZAC contingent. That would mean that there’s no such usage in the UK as “have gotten”; so the present perfect tense of “get” would HAVE to be “have got.” (Again, this wouldn’t be the present meaning, synonymous with “have,” or the meaning synonymous with “must” – both of which are perfectly acceptable usages, neither colloquial nor non-standard, in American and [as far as I know] British English, though British English also has the usage of “have” abbreviated, without “got” – “I’ve a wizard idea.”)
Examples might be, “I’ve got my shoes fixed in that store before,” or “We’ve got a Christmas card from them every year for the past decade.” (Note that in my examples, I feel constrained to include mention of the past, to differentiate the meaning from “have.” And it’s hard for me not to write “gotten.”)
Or as SteveJonesUK puts it, “for the case of describing the actual acquisition of the spoon, where the Americans [sic – SOME Americans, e.g. me] would say ‘I have gotten a spoon,’ we Brits would say ‘I have got a spoon’.”
Again, “I’d just ‘gotten’ used to this when everyone started arguing…” – implying that normally he would say, "I’d just got used to this…
Mr. Jones also summarized his understanding of British and American usage as follows:
I have acquired a kettle (specific)
I have gotten a kettle (American)
I have got a kettle (British and just a little bit ambiguous)
This is NOT the same as saying:
I got a kettle (British and not particularly ambiguous)
(although Mr. Jones accepted this emendation) – “got” is the simple past, and all the other examples are in present perfect tense. (I assume Mr. Jones describes “I have got a kettle” as “just a little bit ambiguous” because it can also mean “I have a kettle.”)
Note that there’s nothing in any of these examples that necessarily implies “recently” – I think that was Cecil’s imaginative interpretation of “have gotten,” which has confused and enlivened the debate.
I like RKTS’s theory that “have gotten” sounds better to me precisely because it differentiates this tense of “get” from the present tense usage “have got,” meaning “have.” But I have to admit that several of the examples given in this string, using “have got” as present perfect (i.e., action taking place in the past) sounded fine to me too.
On the other hand, I must strenuously object to RKTS’s imputation of “ignorant, colloquial usage” for preferring “have gotten” to “have got,” or (if I read him or her correctly) using “have got” to mean “have.” My god, if I’m willing to cavil about usage at such prolix length, I should at least be accorded the dignity of being accused of snobbery, rather than low-brow-ism.
In summary, Americans don’t necessarily agree about whether “have gotten” and “have got” are equally acceptable, or even whether their meanings are identical. But no-one has cited any convincing, or even consistent, evidence that their interpretation is correct, and the dictionaries cited in this string don’t make any distinction. So it’s your typical linguistic donnybrook, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. As RKTS put it, “most talk about what’s ‘correct’ and what’s not is nonsense.”
I didn’t call it an ignorant, colloquial usage; I said it bothers me because it sounds subtly like an ignorant, colloquial usage.
It’s like “as to” and “the fact that.” How many times have you heard a person toss out a phrase, realize it doesn’t fit syntactically with what comes next, then pause briefly, insert one of those phrases, and keep going? It allows for the creation of such obnoxious verbiage as
“Please enlighten me as to your feelings on the subject.”
and
“I am aware of the fact that you feel that way.”
Granted, I don’t object to the existence of those expressions; I use “the fact that” on rare occasions, and as to “as to,” I sometimes use it to introduce a subject, as I just did. Still, they allow for the kind of sloppy usage that bothers me immensely. Gotten is similar.
Not that I expect to convert you to got. I admit that when I first posted in this thread, objecting to gotten, I expected more people to agree with me than actually did; otherwise I would probably have been less vocal.
As to the present tense use of “have got”, I think it’s pretty much agreed that the “got” is entirely unnecessary and there is no reason to use it, whether it is correct or not. Now if you want to debate that point, you’ll have to find someone else to argue with.
