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I was recently watching " The Last of Us" series and was pretty perplexed when Ellie asked Joel "You ever play this one?" pointing to the old Mortal Combat arcade. It was so unusual for me so I even switched the subtitles on and double-checked it, but it was just as I heard. A Present Simple form instead of "Have you ever played this one?"

To be honest I've never heard of such a substitution. I found a couple of threads regarding this matter, but it didn't seem that this case fell under explanations in previous questions.

Is this something that is common in spoken language?

tchrist
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Sogawa-sps
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1 Answers1

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  • You ever play this one?

isn't short for

  • Have you ever played this one?

because the verb form used is play, the infinitive, not played, the past participle, which comes after have in the perfect. Infinitives like play come after modals and do, so You ever play this one? is short for

  • Did you ever play this one?

according to the very common rule of Conversational Deletion, which removes predictable auxiliaries, prepositions, articles, dummies, possessives, pronouns, and conditional if from the beginning of a sentence, going on with the deletions until unpredictable information is encountered.

Here's some more examples:

  • Wife's on the phone, Bill.
  • Never expected that. (= I never expected it)
  • Never expected that, did you? (= You never expected it)
  • Never expected that, did she? (= She never expected it)
  • Ever get to Bellingham, look me up. (= If you ever...)

It's surprising you haven't heard this before. But most people just stick in the missing words and never notice they're missing.

John Lawler
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    I believe that this is one of the cases where American English allows the simple past but British English prefers the present perfect (for "present-relevant" information). If the asker speaks BrE that might explain their confusion. – alphabet Mar 30 '23 at 01:09
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    Is "You ever play this one?" short for "Did you ever play this one?" ? Possibly, but not necessarily. "You ever play this one?" could also be short for "Do you ever play this one?" – Daniel Asimov Mar 30 '23 at 01:35
  • That totally makes sense now, thank you. For some reason, my mind was fixated on the idea that it should have been the Present Perfect, so I didn't think that it could be the Past Simple. – Sogawa-sps Mar 30 '23 at 02:07
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    Various intermediate forms also occur in speech. "Didya ever play this one?" makes a link quite clearly (probably more like "didyerever" with an audible "r" for me, coming from London), while "D'you..." could be "do you..." or "did you..." depending on context. – Chris H Mar 30 '23 at 13:31
  • The "have you ever..." form is also a feasible expansion of the short form, I think it depends on context. "Did you ever play this one?" seems like an option if the game is no longer available for some reason, while "Have you ever played this one?" works if it is still available. – costrom Mar 30 '23 at 14:57
  • Why do you think it is short for did not do ? – minseong Mar 30 '23 at 15:07
  • In context, You ever play this one? can refer to either do or did. In context, the choice would be either obvious or irrelevant -- depending, for instance, on whether it was delivered as a simple request for information, or a challenge by the speaker to beat them at the game. If it weren't obvious, it wouldn't be deleted; whenever words are deleted, information is lost, and it's usually redundant information, which we expect addressees to pick up from context. If they don't, we may judge them to be rather slow on the uptake; there's more than one reason for deletion rules. – John Lawler Mar 30 '23 at 15:36