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Fire1 Posted 8 years ago
Grammar

Can 'have got to verb' be used to express a past experience ?

* I haven't been happy with the situation, but I've got to accept it many times before.


As far as I've been taught, 'have got to verb' is exclusively used to express kind of obligation such as 'must' or 'have to'. But I so doubt whether it is only used in the way or not, that I wrote the sentence on my own to test it on how it sounds to native speakers. I expect it to sound jarring to native speakers because ' have got to accept' seems to be not in harmony with 'many times before', but I reluctantly had to add 'many times before' so as to prevent readers from interpreting 'have got to accept' as 'have to accept' or 'must accept' but 'have gotten to accept', and I'm curious for what reason 'have got to' is fixed to mean 'have to' or 'must' exclusively. It'd be all the better to add trustworthy information to back up your opinion.

Thank you for reading my question.

  

Top answer

I haven't been happy with the situation, but I've had to accept it many times before. "Have got to" refers to a present situation, actually something in the near future. " I'm not happy with the situation, but I've got to accept it because there's nothing I can do about it.

— AlpheccaStars

  • I haven't been happy with the situation, but I've had to accept it many times before.
  • "Have got to" refers to a present situation, actually something in the near future.
  • " I'm not happy with the situation, but I've got to accept it because there's nothing I can do about it.
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3 Answers
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 I haven't been happy with the situation, but I've had to accept it many times before.

"Have got to" refers to a present situation, actually something in the near future. You need the past perfect, "have had to." Here is the version with "have got to."

I'm not  happy with the situation, but I've got to accept it because there's nothing I can do about it.
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fire1 I'm curious for what reason 'have got to' is fixed to mean 'have to'

Note the tense of the underlined verbs. A present (simple or perfect) construction cannot randomly be assigned a past-time sense.

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fire1As far as I've been taught, 'have got to verb' is exclusively used to express kind of obligation such as 'must' or 'have to'.

That's obviously not true, as shown by your own example (under your interpretation), repeated below.

fire1I haven't been happy with the situation, but I've got to accept it many times before.
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