HaveToHave

« previous post | next post »

From the character Morton (played by Robert Wagner) in the 2005 movie The Fallen Ones:

(1) We have a lot of earth to move and maintain structural integrity.

The sentence has have used in two different ways in the conjuncts: with a NP object in the first conjunct, with a VP complement in the second (where it's apparently the obligative have of We have to maintain structural integrity). This is formally similar to the GoToGo construction of

(2) She's going to San Francisco and talk on firewalls.

(which has go used in two different ways in the conjuncts: as a motion verb, with a directional complement, in the first conjunct, but as a prospective quasi-modal, with a VP complement,  in the second conjunct). Because of this parallel, I'll call the configuration in (1) HaveToHave. 

Now, for a fair number of speakers (including me), GoToGo is simply a variant construction in their English (it's non-standard, but for these speakers it's not an inadvertent error). I don't know about the status of HaveToHave. Are there people who are cool with (1) and similar examples, like the made-up (3)?

(3) I have a lot of work to do and finish by noon.

[Later: Mark Mandel points out that (3) can be parsed as: a lot of work to [do and finish by noon]. Aiee, the curse of inventing examples. Try: (3') I have a lot to see and go away by noon. Of course, the question is not about these invented examples, but about what people actually produce.]

These don't fly for me, but there might be speakers for whom HaveToHave is a variant rather than an error. (Its status for the writer of (1), or for Robert Wagner, if he departed from the script, is not determinable. It could easily have been an inadvertent error.) If there are, then HaveToHave probably differs semantically (in subtle ways) from alternative constructions, as GoToGo does.

Final note: the oddity of (1) and similar examples would be easy to miss — I'm professionally attuned to such things, but they'd probably be automatically "corrected" in perception by most people — especially given the closeness of (1) to the standard

(4) We have to move a lot of earth and maintain structural integrity.

(with obligative have distributed across the two conjuncts).

 



Comments are closed.