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Note: I have edited the question substantially as I was unclear about the question I was asking. It is mostly my own fault for not posing the question better, but I hope that it is more clear now, and I will be able to get some more relevant answers. Thanks to everyone for your answers even if they were off topic for my intended question.

To let some one know that I'd like to ask them a question, I might say:

I've got a question for you.

What is the point of having the word "got" in this sentence? It seems redundant with the contracted word "have". They both add the same meaning to the sentence.

Laurel
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user91468
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    It's not said as commonly as the other two variants, but there's nothing outlandish about "I've a question for you". – Erik Kowal Sep 15 '14 at 02:20
  • Hi, and welcome to ELU. Please feel free to take the site tour and visit the help center for guidance on how to use this site. Also, you might be interested in our sister site, ELL, which is a good site for basic English questions. – anongoodnurse Sep 15 '14 at 04:24
  • I disagree that it sounds awkward in conversation. When I first read "I've a question for you", it definitely sounded awkward. However when speaking it out loud, it sounds perfectly fine to me and I realized I actually say it quite often. – Loocid Sep 15 '14 at 02:40
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    The idea that a sentence should always be formed according to the principles of formal logic and that every lexical item should always have some unique, important semantic function is the stuff of fantasy linguistics. If one wanted to list all the situations where English speakers use an extra word which is not strictly semantically necessary, you would be here for days on end. – Graham H. Apr 20 '23 at 03:10
  • By the same logic, for you is also redundant. – listeneva Apr 20 '23 at 03:25
  • Yes it is. It identifies the addressee, which is the default receiver NP, and is predictable and thus deletable. This kind of stuff happens all the time, by rules; there are dozens, maybe hundreds. – John Lawler Apr 20 '23 at 19:34

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I've is just a shorthand for I have, so while it does sound a bit awkward to me, it's still grammatically correct. I think the awkwardness comes from the loss of rhythm when using the I've form (you'd say the 've part pretty quickly compared to the rest of the sentence)

Raestloz
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See my related answer in this very old question: Can a word be contracted twice (e.g. "I'ven't")?

The example you give is not done in American English. You can't contract non-auxiliary "have". "I've not a clue if this is possible" is also not grammatical in American English. It may be in British English, though.

I copied this from a comment I left below, because I think it clarifies what I'm trying to say:

"I've" is a fine contraction, just in American English you can only use it to replace "I have" when "have" is used as an auxiliary verb (e.g. in conjunction with a past participle). "I've been there" is OK. "I've a dog" is not. In the example "I'ven't a clue"—"I haven't a clue", the verb "have" is not auxiliary, so it can't be contracted with the pronoun "I".

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nohat
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  • Is this really ungrammatical in AmE but grammatical in BrE? See Ngram. There's not much difference between them. (And there's something funny about the way Ngrams handles apostrophes; click on the search button again after clicking on the link.) – Peter Shor Sep 15 '14 at 03:19
  • In British English we would say "I haven't a clue." – Kate Bunting Oct 25 '16 at 09:43
  • "I haven't a clue" might sound natural to British people because of the BBC Radio 4 series "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue". This started in 1972, when such use of "haven't" might not have sounded as old-fashioned as it does now. "...hasn't a..." is certainly less prevalent than "...doesn't have a...". – Rosie F Mar 30 '20 at 10:50
  • There's a transatlantic divide here. A British English speaker might ask an American, "D'you have a pen I can borrow?" and be answered "No I haven't, sorry". – Dan May 21 '23 at 20:38
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Yes, "got" is entirely redundant. (That is, as long as you write out "I have" for American English, as nohat mentions. I can't answer for other dialects.) The usual way to analyze this would be to consider "have" (contracted here) the sentence's simple predicate and "got" a past participle.

"To have got" is considered colloquial and generally avoided in formal contexts. You can read more about it in various usage guides (for example, "The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation").

MarcInManhattan
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As in the original question and earlier answers, when the three phrases are used interchangeably (as they often seem to be), "got" is redundant.

However, if the speaker / writer wanted to express the specific point "I didn't have a question for you earlier, but I have one now", the phrase "I've got a question for you" would be the only one that conveyed the earlier absence of a question.

In that case "have" (or its contraction) would be auxiliary verbs that identify the present perfect tense of the verb "to get", so the effective verb in the sentence is the one of acquisition, not possession ("I have acquired a question for you"). When spoken, the emphasis would be on the active verb : "I've got a question for you".

There is a meaning where "got" would not be redundant, but the sentence is likely to be pronounced differently and it would be rare (and probably at least a little contrived).

ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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