what have you got going on?

Question

Hi,I am just wondering if the following sentence is correct gammartically."what have you got going on?"Doesn't it have to be "what have you got gone on?"Because it's after "have got".Thanks in advance.

Paco2004 · Accepted Answer

I think you can parse that sentence like this:

Do you have anything going on this weekend?
(=Do you have anything you are going to do this weekend?)
-> Do you have [what] going on this weekend?
-> What do you have going on this weekend?
Change AmE <have> into BrE <have got>
-> What have you got going on this weekend?
paco

CalifJim · Answer

The sentence is correct as it stands. Not only does it not have to be "... have got gone ...", but that would make it positively ungrammatical!

"have got" with a past participle (like "gone") is only going to work with transitive verbs, because it forms a passive structure. "He has got killed / stuck in traffic / etc." This "has got" is not the same as the idiomatic "has got" meaning simply "has".

CJ

Victorycountry · Answer

Hi, Paco and Jim.

Thanks for the reply.

Can you also say "I haven't taking any medicine for it" then?

Thanks

Paco2004 · Answer

Hello VC

In English there is not such a construct like <have + ~ing>. 'Have' cannot take a gerundive phrase as its object.
paco

Pieanne · Answer

Hello, VC, what's the context?

It could be either "I haven't taken " or "I haven't been taking", but Paco is right, you can't have "have + -ing form"

Clive · Answer

Hi guys,

In English there is not such a construct like <have + ~ing>. 'Have' cannot take a gerundive phrase as its object.

It's very interesting to read things like this, because native speakers are not usually familiar with such rules. They just 'speak without the rules', as you know.

Let me try to test this one.

A. What's your schedule in the gym today?

B. Well, I have dancing at 3pm and swimming at 4pm.

What do you think? Clive

Paco2004 · Answer

Hello Clive

"They just speak without the rules." How do you prove this? Do you really think English native speakers speak without the rules?
paco

Clive · Answer

Hi Paco,

I was trying to keep my remark simple. Please let me explain a little more of what was in my mind.

I think that if you asked 'the average English speaker' to write down as many rules about the English language as possible, you'd get a very, very short list. On the other hand, if you do the same thing with 'the average English learner', you'll get a much longer list.

I'm an educated English speaker and I am amazed and intrigued by how many 'rules' that I have never even thought about are quoted by NNS. I'm also intrigued by how accurate many of these rules are, perhaps not in every detail, but close enough to allow pretty good English to be produced.

As a considerable generalization, I'd say the native speakers' big advantage is that, by and large, they have an ear and a 'feel' for what is OK and not OK.

NNS people who write to this forum are often interested in naming structures and other features in English, and analysing the language in terms of the rules, and I'd venture to say that most native speakers couldn't do this and wouldn't be interested in doing this. Please understand here that I see that rules serve a very, very useful purpose, and that I mean what I'm saying as complimentary to NNS people.

Would you agree with all this? In my ignorance of the Japanese language and mind, I would tend to assume that all this is equally true for the Japanese language, and any other language.

Best wishes, Clive

paco

Victorycountry · Answer

Hi, all.

Yes, that's what I thought so and I do know the rules, but because it was there in a grammar book so I was wondered. Now I can see it a mistake.

"I haven't taking any medicine for it" => haven't taken

Thanks for the replies, Paco, Jim, Clive and Mr. P

Paco2004 · Answer

Hello Clive

Maybe I understand what you mean. To tell the truth, my concern in languages revived when I got questions about the Japanese language from people oversea. They often asked me "why do you say so?". But in many cases I couldn't explain why I am saying so. Sometimes, to answer their questions, I read Japanese grammar books for school kids as well as for foreign Japanese learners and I was often surprised to know what a difficult language I am speaking as my mother language. Mother languages are things of that sort.

We can 'acquire' our mother language in childhood, but we have to 'learn' second languages. 'Acquiring a language' and 'learning a language' are different things and therefore they need different methods. Let me calculate the hours you spent in acquiring English up to the age of 15, for example. 15 x 365 x 16 =87,600 hours. Usual Japanese school kids learn English for six years in school, and they can share their time to learning English at the rate of three to five per week. This means: 6 x 52 x 4 =1,250 hours. The ratio is 70:1. If you take into account the phenomenon that learned languages are easily fossilized if they are not used, the ratio would be more than 100 : 1. It is why we NNS need 'grammar'. 'Grammar' is just one of the means to learn a language in an efficient way without spending a lot of time. I'll show you another evidence to support what I am saying. Your ancestors spoke English without being taught English grammar before the 17th century. Those days 'grammar' meant only 'Latin grammar' and students then had to 'learn' it earnestly just because they couldn't acquire Latin in their living environment. Furthermore, please remember the first English grammar book was written not for native English speakers but for foreigners engaged in trade with English speakers.

You acquired 'English grammatical rules' without learning 'English grammar', but they are still the same rules we are learning. You are keeping them in your brain cells just unconsciously whereas we have to do so consciously. In this connection, I read recently [url=http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0014.html?m%3D4] an interesting article by Dr Pinker [/url]. According to him, if you get hurt in some part of your brain, you would lose the ability to speak out 'irregular verbs' and if you get another part of your brain, you'll lose the ability to produce 'regular verbs'.

paco
[PS] By the way we have two ways of describing the grammar of the Japanese language. One is kokugo-bunpou (mother tongue's grammar) that is for our kids. The other is nihongo-bunpou (Japanese grammar) that is for Japanese learning foreigners. For me, the latter is quite interesting to read.

what have you got going on?

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