"Have got" as a verb

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Originally Posted by MASM

I was told once that "have got" was only used in the present tense, to emphasize possession, "got" didn't mean anything in this case like "do" didn't mean anything in "Do you speak English?" for example. As for the past, future.. "have" will be used without "got".

Maybe it's not a grammatically acceptable reasoning, but It helped me to understand when I had to use it. My English teachers where British, so I guess they're trying to say, that if "I've got (whatever)" was a common thing to say, it should be taught.

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I think that's the most intelligent way of presenting it (if it must be presented as a verb) - as a verb form that's only used in the present tense. All other tenses use the forms for "to have".
It just surprises me that no other teachers admit to having thought about it.

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Originally Posted by Raymott

I think that's the most intelligent way of presenting it (if it must be presented as a verb) - as a verb form that's only used in the present tense. All other tenses use the forms for "to have".
It just surprises me that no other teachers admit to having thought about it.

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At the moment, my 8-year-old student is only doing the present tense, but after our second class, I did start thinking about future classes and wondering exactly this! What would I do about the past tense of "to have got"? A previous post with "I had got a T-shirt 10 years ago" is grammatically incorrect as we all know, and should be "I had a T-shirt 10 years ago".

I was still finding it very difficult to stick to the "have got" system in our second class. I had a table full of plastic vegetables and pictures of animals, and I constantly found myself saying "Do you have a carrot?", "Do you have a cat?" and then having to rephrase it as "Have you got.....?" It felt very unnatural, even though, as I said before, if I was speaking to another native speaker, I would actually automatically say "Have you got a cat?"

He's definitely too young for me to simply wait until I'm pretty sure he's cracked "to have got" and then introduce "to have" and expect him to understand that they're exactly the same thing, but with a different form (from have got) in the negative and interrogative, as well as in the past/future!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MASM

I was told once that "have got" was only used in the present tense, to emphasize possession, "got" didn't mean anything in this case like "do" didn't mean anything in "Do you speak English?" for example. As for the past, future.. "have" will be used without "got".

Maybe it's not a grammatically acceptable reasoning, but It helped me to understand when I had to use it. My English teachers where British, so I guess they're trying to say, that if "I've got (whatever)" was a common thing to say, it should be taught.

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:up: Makes sense to me. That's how I use it and hear it used.

b