Grammar – Causative Verb in ‘You Got to Go to the Basketball Game Last Night?’

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I was studying causative verbs and I found an interrogative sentence I can't translate into my native language. it's because I don't understand the meaning in/of the English question. this is the question.

You got to go to the basketball game last night?

The source is from the book "complete English Grammar rules" (Peter herring. ©2016. pag.294)
I tried to use the google translator but the translation didn't make sense, and I can't figure it out by myself.
I know sometimes in colloquial English it's only used "got" as "have got" indicating obligation, but as this is in a grammar book I don't think this is the case.
So the questions I have are:

  1. What is the meaning of the question? may you give me an example?
  2. where is the usage of the causative verb there?
  3. why in the book do they enlist the causative verbs (same page) and instead of using "(to) get" in the infinitive form, they used "got" in the past tense?

Best Answer

You got to go to the basketball game last night?

means, roughly:

Were you allowed to go to the basketball game last night?

or

Were you able to go to the basketball game last night?

This is a very informal but currently quite common usage. In this usage "*You got to X?" is used in place of "Did you get to X?" In grammatical form it is statement, not a question. Tone of voice, usage, and context makes it a question.

Other uses of this construction might be:

  • You got to stay out after 10:00 pm on a school night?
  • You got to take teh Honors class? You got to drink wine at home?
  • You got to go to the sold-out concert?

I would not say that "got" is acting as a causative verb in this construction, nor is anything else. These sentences could be rewritten using "allow" which is often but not always a causative verb.

Since I don't have your book's examples to read, I can't say why they use "got" rather than "to get" It may be because the action is in the past.

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