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Does "Mary's Got Talent" mean "Mary Has Got Talent"? Is "has got" grammatically correct in this instance?

MarieD
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  • You mean, is "America's Got Talent" correct? – Hot Licks Jan 25 '15 at 23:53
  • Why, do you suggest, it might not be? – WS2 Jan 25 '15 at 23:56
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    @EdwinAshworth Wrong dupe: has got is not "simple past tense". It’s the present prefect construction which uses a present-tensed flavor of have and the past participle. – tchrist Jan 26 '15 at 00:01
  • @tchrist Irene's answer there covers this. The verb phrase have got for possess, mainly used in the UK (I've got a horse / car / cold / sneaking suspicion ...). – Edwin Ashworth Jan 26 '15 at 00:11
  • @EdwinAshworth Everybody says have got for possess, Edwin. This is not a UK thing. I cannot imagine why you think it is. – tchrist Jan 26 '15 at 00:32
  • These Google Ngrams for 'I have flu / I've got flu' show that different preferences exist: American English corpus; British English corpus – Edwin Ashworth Jan 26 '15 at 00:45
  • @tchrist Alex Gooch at BBC World Service Learning English writes: <<Also, in Britain we often use 'have got' or 'has got' when we talk about possession, while Americans generally just use 'have' or 'has'.

    So, for example, in American English we might say: "I have a new car."

    In British English it's more normal to say: "I've got a new car." >>

     – Edwin Ashworth Jan 26 '15 at 00:56
  • @EdwinAshworth You’ve got to be kidding me: people say “I’ve got” *all the time* here. Honest. See this ngram, but you’ll have to hit the search button yourself because they’re decoding the URI wrong. – tchrist Jan 26 '15 at 01:15
  • ...The verb phrase have got for possess, certainly the vastly preferred informal option in the UK (I've got a horse / car / cold / sneaking suspicion ...; 'I have a horse' would in most cases sound highbrow / stuffy). Apparently, the usage in the US is more common than some commentators have stated. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 26 '15 at 15:24
  • The ngram results don't really prove anything, as they don't distinguish "have got" (possessive) from "have got to". but ngram shows "have got" declinjng steadily, with 2000 levels less than half of 1940 levels, on both sides of the pond. However, British usage runs about twice that of American usage for any time during that period. – Brian Hitchcock Jan 27 '15 at 09:04

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Yes. Yes. (But it's informal.)

Greg Lee
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  • On the other hand, saying Mary has got talent instead of Mary's got talent is emphatic, or at least strangely official. Auxiliaries are contracted wherever possible in colloquial English. As Greg knows even better than I, since he was trained as a phonologist. – John Lawler Jan 26 '15 at 02:03
  • The character limits are there for a reason. Next time, please expound on your answer. We really do want to hear more about it. – Kit Z. Fox Jan 28 '15 at 13:24