Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 March 2

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March 2

Definition of "have" in "I would have done it"

What is the definition of "have" in the context of "I would have done it"? ----Seans Potato Business 16:44, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

It is an auxiliary verb indicating the perfect aspect. --Jayron32 16:48, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

(ETA - oops, this is about "would have", not simply "have" but I'll leave it in case it might be useful)modal auxiliary is a bit more specific. Grammatical mood, optative mode, subjunctive etc. This stuff can get tricky, you may also be interested in alethic modality compared to epistemic modality, and the potential for confusion between these in natural language, covered at Modal_logic#Confusion_with_epistemic_modalities. Getting to the bottom of "I would have done it if I could have done it" can take quite a while! SemanticMantis (talk) 16:53, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

The unfortunate thing is that "have" comes from two different places. The auxiliary verb comes from Latin, while the verb meaning to possess come from Germanic roots.[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:02, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Uhm, no, the auxiliary have isn't from Latin, and the etymonline article you linked to isn't saying it is; you must have misread something there. (It may be true that Latin developed a habeo + participle construction into a perfect construction earlier than English and other European languages did, and it's been suggested by some linguists – e.g. Heine & Kuteva, The changing languages of Europe – that there may have been some cross-linguistic analogical influence triggering these parallel developments across so many languages, but still, the development of the have perfect in English happened on the basis of purely native grammatical material.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:23, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Actually, I read that etymonline entry to mean that all uses of the English "have" derive from the Proto-Germanic root and that the Latin root, while it has a similar meaning and spelling, is believed to be entirely linguistically unrelated. --Jayron32 17:25, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Exactly. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:42, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Looks like you're right. I was thrown by the fact that "I would have done it" in Spanish uses haber, which would be from the Latin root. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:30, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

French and Italian use their cognate verbs in the same way. The analogous use of the unrelated Germanic verb (its Latin cognate is capere 'take') is a likely symptom of a Sprachbund. —Tamfang (talk) 06:46, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Not an answer to the question you asked, but you may be interested in this discussion [2] of the nonstandard use of "of" rather than "have" in constructions like this. Mnudelman (talk) 19:07, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Words like "could have" are often slurred to "could've", which sounds like "could of", hence that very nonstandard spelling. A further abbreviation is to convert "'ve" to an "uh" sound, is in "could-a, would-a, should-a". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:15, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

I find could of less annoying than a certain comic book's habit of showing an Irish accent by spelling of as 've. —Tamfang (talk) 00:58, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

The word "brouhaha" has three syllables and any syllable can be the accented one. Is there a term to describe such a word?

I am familiar with the word "brouhaha". (Wiktionary definition is here: wikt:brouhaha.) But, I wanted to just double-check its dictionary definition, to see what is "officially" listed as its meaning. I ended up at this website: [3]. I found it quite odd that this is a three-syllable word and that any of the three syllables can be the "accented" one. In other words, the word "brouhaha" may be pronounced as: (1) BROU-ha-ha; or (2) brou-HA-ha; or (3) brou-ha-HA. I don't think I've ever run across such an oddity before. In any event, my question: is there a name for such a word, where any syllable can be the accented one? Particularly so, when there are many syllables, not just, say, two? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:18, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

I've always heard it with the stress on the first syllable, but there's no accounting for what English speakers will come up with. It comes from French, for what it's worth.[4] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:24, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Very interesting etymology. Thanks. I have heard two of the three pronunciations. But never the third one. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:01, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Never heard anything but the first syllable stress in English. (Or American for that matter actually, but less exposure to that). Fgf10 (talk) 18:53, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

The 1972 supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary gives only one pronunciation, with the stress on the first syllable. I'm dubious about the accuracy of that website's suggested pronunciations. BTW, here's a discussion of the etymology: [5], which says that it indeed entered English from French, but possibly might have originally have come from Hebrew. Mnudelman (talk) 18:59, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

If it does come from French, it would be worth noting that French does NOT treat stress the same way English does. French phonology#Stress covers this. French doesn't really have lexical stress. Of course, English words borrowed from French take on English stress rules often, and as noted, I've always only ever heard the word stressed on the first syllable. --Jayron32 19:05, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

The stress is on the second syllable only for this distinguished linguist. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:46, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Canadian here: I've only heard the stress on the first or (rarely) the third syllable, not the second. Matt Deres (talk) 19:01, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

OK, all. Thanks. But the question is not "where does the accent properly fall?". The question is: is there a name for a multi-syllable word in which the accent can fall on any syllable? That is, ignoring simple two-syllable words. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 06:57, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Are you just asking about English? If so, no. But Spanish has cóntinuo "continuous" contínuo "I continue" and continuó "he continued" as well as other examples. μηδείς (talk) 21:40, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, I am speaking about English. But I am not asking for more examples of such words. I am asking if there is a name for such a word. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 01:56, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

It appears that "brouhaha" itself is not an example. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:23, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

μηδείς, see wikt:continuo#Spanish (-ti-), wikt:continúo#Spanish (-nú-), wikt:continuó#Spanish (-ó).

—Wavelength (talk) 02:47, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I was paying too much attention to the ISO+ codes.

There doesn't seem to be a single word to capture the meaning, but the term appears to be simply variable stress (we don't have an article, per se; that redirects to the lexical stress section of our article on linguistic stress). Matt Deres (talk) 13:32, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

"is there a name for a multi-syllable word in which the accent can fall on any syllable?" I believe the term is "multi-syllabic word". syllable accents generally follow rules, but rules always have exceptions and ultimately, English is what we speak of it (to butcher a phrase). 97.93.100.146 (talk) 00:12, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 02:02, 8 March 2016 (UTC)