"What else ya got?"
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Listening a couple of days ago to the radio program Exploring Music, I learned something about English morphology. The episode broadcast on 5/18/2026 has the title "What else ya got?", and host Bill McGlaughlin introduces it this way:
The first featured composer was Johann Pachelbel, best known for the Canon in D, and the host asks the featured question this way:
By the time we've been through a few more composers, McGlaughlin expresses the question in a more colloquial way:
That's a perfectly normal (though informal) phrase in my variety of American English.
But as I listened, it occurred to me that substituting other pronouns results in a wide range of acceptability.
Intuitions about such things are notoriously unreliable, but FWIW, "What else we got?" seems marginal for me, and "*What else I/she/he/it/they got?" all seem wrong (though some people certainly use those forms).
As a check on my intuitions, I took a look at Mark Davies' News on the Web corpus. Following general orthographic conventions, I used "you" rather than "ya" — and I put an explicit question mark at the end of all the queries to avoid things like "what else they got up to".
The results support my intuitions of gradient acceptability:
| PRO | AUX | no AUX |
| you | 62 | 116 |
| we | 25 | 15 |
| I | 1 | 0 |
| she | 5 | 0 |
| he | 10 | 0 |
| it | 1 | 0 |
| they | 10 | 1 |
…and underline another point, namely overall variation in the choice between have got and plain have…
J.W. Brewer said,
May 20, 2026 @ 7:08 am
Is there any meaningful pronoun-by-pronoun variation in the AUX when there is an AUX? One can find instances by googling of e.g. "what else does she got" as well as "what else has she got." The former sounds to my ear notably "more informal" than the latter, but I have no particularly useful intuition as to how that would shake out in ratios in actual usage.
More generally, it seems easy to concoct a just-so story explaining why a more informal form might be more common in direct address than in third-party reference but it would be interesting to know if there are other examples showing the same pattern or indeed any showing the opposite pattern in order to guard against the risk that such a just-so story is not actually explaining anything. Although maybe there's a testable prediction associated with that just-so story that "what else we got" should be more common when the "we" is inclusive rather than exclusive? Indeed, sometimes inclusive we is really a polite synonym/euphemism for "you," because the speaker is not literally part of the logical subject but is sort of inserting himself in as an honorary member as a gesture of solidarity. (The first draft just-so story would presumably be something about how using aggressively informal forms in direct address is intended to elicit warm fuzzy feelings of solidarity from the addressee.)
Chris Button said,
May 20, 2026 @ 7:17 am
I think there is fodder for numerous Llog posts on the use/misuse/abuse of the funny little word "got" and its general lack of conformity across varieties of English.
Victor Mair said,
May 20, 2026 @ 7:36 am
In two of the iterations, I hear — more or less clearly — "what else have you got?"
Victor Mair said,
May 20, 2026 @ 7:37 am
@Chris Button
you got me
Michael Vnuk said,
May 20, 2026 @ 8:06 am
In the third sample, there seems to be a slight hesitation at the start of 'What'.
Also, if the speaker didn't have to worry about the 'else', he might have ended up with 'Wotcha got?' or something similar.
David L said,
May 20, 2026 @ 9:08 am
OT, but I was struck by the spelling of the host's name, McGlaughlin. Google assures me it's correct, but I would have guessed McLaughlin, which I would pronounce exactly the same.
Mark Liberman said,
May 20, 2026 @ 9:25 am
@Victor Mail: "In two of the iterations, I hear — more or less clearly — "what else have you got?"
As clearly distinguished in the post…
Tim Leonard said,
May 20, 2026 @ 4:13 pm
I read the title and expected it to be about a reduction of "what else ya got?" to "what elcha got?", a process that intrigues me. But no, you got something else.
Michael Watts said,
May 20, 2026 @ 5:24 pm
Interestingly, it's possible for the form of "have got" that elides the "have" to be more or less jocularly reconstructed with auxiliary "do" instead. See e.g. here, but just searching for the phrase turns up any number of examples.
I feel that this same process can occur with some other fixed expressions, but I'm not coming up with an example offhand.
JPL said,
May 20, 2026 @ 5:49 pm
(Rummaging through a box of things) "Wait a minute. Let's see. What else I got here?" (Intonation contour high on "what else", falling on the rest, squeaky voice. Maybe after a Labovian "Hey, dis ain't gonna be biad!")
Seems OK to me. So why don't we have "What else he gots?" You do have, with the alternative periphrastic modal auxiliary 'got', the more considered, somewhat jocular "I gots to go". That one seems to be open to a third person singular use, if anyone wants to try it.
JPL said,
May 20, 2026 @ 6:07 pm
Michael Watts's comment was not visible when I made my comment. He's probably referring to the developments from "Whaddaya got?", where aux "have" is reinterpreted as "do", the schwa vowel in the middle doing Janus-like double duty. "I gots to go" probably comes from that line, via "Do I gotta go?" (palms upraised, lips twerked).
RF said,
May 21, 2026 @ 9:24 am
A lot of expressions with”you” allow for dropping words in a way that wouldn’t work with other pronouns: How you doin’, Where ya been, etc.
Michael Watts said,
May 21, 2026 @ 5:21 pm
It's possible that this phenomenon is historically relevant, but it isn't what I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of reconstructing a "do" in a sentence where an auxiliary verb is missing (not present in reduced form, but missing), and doing so while possessing the knowledge that "do" is not the correct verb to put there. It's an intentional error on the part of the speaker, done as a joke.
That said, this kind of joke can become a non-joke if it becomes prevalent enough.