English Language & Usage Asked on June 20, 2021
Is "what have they to say?" grammatical? If so, what is the difference with the phrase "what do they have to say?"? Do they mean the same thing?
Yes, it's grammatical. Though it's uncommon in American English, and therefore sounds better to an American ear if delivered in an RP British accent, which makes it falute much higher. The difference is strictly syntactic -- that is, it makes no difference in meaning.
The verb have has two usages in English, both common:
In American English, the two usages have different syntactic affordances. In particular, the first, meaningful, sense of have is treated like a lexical verb and undergoes Do-Support in questions and negatives.
The second, meaningless, auxiliary usage is treated like an auxiliary:
inverted with the subject in questions, and contracted with negatives
The converses are strange. If you treat lexical have like an auxiliary, you get the British-sounding variant.
and sometimes you violate idiom constraints
But if you treat auxiliary have like a lexical verb, you get garbage
Correct answer by John Lawler on June 20, 2021
Yes, "what have they to say" is "grammatical," that is, it is a correct grammatical construction. It is an independent clause. It could stand as a complete sentence with the capitalization of "What" and with an ending question mark as punctuation. "what have they to say?" and "what do they have to say?" would have the same meaning to most readers. "what have they to say?" likely will sound formal and a bit archaic to most American English speakers.
Answered by lld on June 20, 2021
"What do they have to say" could be interpreted as "what are they obliged to say". Imagine some children have been naughty and must apologise to the whole school. The other phrasing avoids the ambiguity.
Either is correct, whatever that means.
Answered by Bloke Down The Pub on June 20, 2021
They have the same meaning. "What have they to say?" is an older way of saying it. "What do they have to say?" is a newer way of saying it. In contemporary English, do/does/did <subject> <verb> is used a lot in questions, while <subject> <verb> is used a lot in statements.
However this is not a hard rule written in stone. You can choose either option in both cases (though the default, conventional word order is different). If you use <verb> <subject> in a question, it often sounds anywhere between fancy and/or archaic, depending on the situation. When you use <subject> do/does/did <verb> in a statement though, it is often done for emphasis (usually with vocal emphasis on the word do/does/did).
In general, completely ignoring the matter of normal, contemporary style and usage, the following holds true grammatically:
<simple present verb> = do(es) <singular simple present verb>
<simple present verb> <subject> = do(es) <subject> <singular simple present verb>
<subject> <simple present verb> = <subject> do(es) <singular simple present verb>
<simple past verb> = did <simple past verb>
<simple past verb> <subject> = did <subject> <simple past verb>
<subject> <simple past verb> = <subject> did <simple past verb>
Answered by Panzercrisis on June 20, 2021
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