@Kernel Sanders - I'm afraid I have to disagree with you about these nuanced differences. In British English there is absolutely no difference in meaning between "have" and "have got" (which is why it dictionaries list it under "have"). The only difference is grammatical - we can only use "have got" in present simple - and one of formality. I also teach English, and I've never seen any British course book, dictionary, grammar book or usage book suggest that there is any difference in meaning, even nuanced, only one of formality.

Here is Swan, in Practical English Usage, the "bible" for many EFL teachers and students - "Note that 'have got' means exactly the same as 'have' in this case (possession, relationships, illnesses characteristics etc)"

As you say, "Got milk?" is a laconic advertising slogan, no doubt a deliberate play on words, combining the meanings of "Do you have any milk?" and "Did you get any milk?", which could be one reason why "Have milk?" wouldn't work. But there's another, much simpler reason it would sound ridiculous - we just don't often elide sentences (miss words out) with "have" - "Have a car?" doesn't work, but "Got a car?" does. In fact, we often elide with "got" - "Got a light?", "Got a moment", so I don't think you can really base any semantic assumptions on that.

And with those expressions, and others such as "Have you got it with you", we could equally well say "Do you have a light", "Do you have a moment", and "Do you have it with you", so I don't think you can really draw any conclusions about "got"
being more to do with accessibility. The only difference is that the "got" versions are more informal.

And there is no temporal difference either. "She's got blue eyes and a fiery temper" is no shorter temporally than "She has blue eyes and a fiery temper". And the same with "He's got a Masters in Finance, a great job and a big house in the country" and "He has a Masters in Finance" etc.

Included in Swan's examples is one for permanent possession with "have got" - "My mother's got two sisters", and one for temporary possession with "have" - "The Prime Minister has a bad cold".

Really the only difference is that we use "have got" in normal informal spoken language, and "have" in more formal spoken language and in writing.

This of course doesn't negate the fact that we occasionally also use "have got" as the present perfect of "get" - "I've just got myself a new car", and we would probably interpret "I've just got a virus from somewhere" as "I've just contracted a virus" (although I don't follow the logic of why somebody should think that use of the present perfect should mean something is no longer true, as in your example; we never use it like that for anything else).

But without the use of "just" or other words to reinforce that we mean "get", we would normally simply take it to mean possession, as in "I've got a cold".

@HS - I've just come across a webpage from the Arts Department at Glasgow University where they suggest that, whereas "Have you got any?" is more common in English Standard English, "Do you have any?" is seen as preferred or more common in Scottish Standard English. Perhaps this was traditionally taught in Scottish schools and universities and might explain why you feel the way you do. My later education was in English schools, and of course all the teaching materials we use as well as reference books tend to reflect English Standard English, so I hadn't come across this aspect before.

http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/STELLA/LILT/scottishse.htm

@Paul Newcomb - Stephen Fry's paean to the wonders of the English language should be compulsory viewing for all those who think love of the language consists of criticising others for not following some artificial rule or other. I've already linked to it myself in these pages.

Tesco's decision was a victory for the grammar police and a sad day for those of us who believe in the primacy of idiomatic English over pedantry.

The truth is that "less" has been used for countable nouns since the earliest days of English, and by some of our finest writers, as Patrick Hadley has shown. If anything it is the strict differentiation between fewer and less that is "new", not vice versa. It seems to have started around 1770 when one man's idea (that fewer for number was more elegant) became elevated into a "rule".

And even where we might use "fewer" in more formal language, what some people call "careful writing", we often use "less" in normal spoken language; I know I often use "less" for people , for example - "There were less people than last time".

And it's not as though the rule doesn't have exceptions: Less is always used in mathematical expressions and after "one" - "That's one less thing I have to do today". And also, of course, when units can be broken down into smaller ones - "less than five miles / ten gallons / eight years old"

As for the supermarket signs, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage suggests that "less" is the usual choice in constructions like "Ten items or less", "500 words or less". And as with advertisements, aren't supermarket signs likely to come across as more friendly if they use the language people normally speak rather than some over-correct version?

Two more exceptions like passers-by - hangers-on and runners-up

@HS - as to common use, you maybe answered your own question there, as you say in NZ "civil engineers", (from which I assume not necessarily the general public) are fond of the term.

The document I quoted definitions of overbridge and underbridge from above is called British Standard Definitions of Civil Engineering Terms, and is published by Railtrack, the company that owns and runs the railway infrastructure in the UK. They say the document "defines terms in common use in civil engineering". So I think we have to assume that civil engineers in Britain are "quite fond" of them as well.

I think "deviation" is a separate issue, however. This does indeed seem to be another of your NZ curiosities - "The Hobsonville Deviation" gets more than 20,000 hits on Google, as opposed to 49 for "The Hobsonville bypass". Oxford Online doesn't include this definition of deviation; the Onlinedictionary.co.nz, however does include this: "a diversion from the main highway", which I would call a detour.

On Google, "deviation motorway" brings up mainly hits for Hobsonville, but also a few for Greenhithe, Mangatawhiri and Maramarua, all of which seem to be bypasses on NZ state highways. Interestingly, NZTA, who run the state highways and refer to the Maramarua Deviation, on the SH2, are planning something similar on the same road to avoid Katikati, but they refer to this as the Katikati Bypass. Is there a difference? And is 'deviation' only really being used as a technical term during construction? - NZTA's own map simply refers to the Hobsonville Motorway: http://www.nzta.govt.nz/projects/hobsonville/interactive-map.html

There are also plenty of NZ hits for "deviation road". And incidentally, there's a winery in Australia called Deviation Road Winery.

Sorry, that should read - And where the S goes doesn't depend on the grammatical nature of the components either.

There seem to be two completely different questions here - someone else's and passers-by.

I see that my browser is red-lining the former, but I can think of no reason why - of course it's correct. Here's Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage - "In present-day English, compound pronouns with else -*anybody else, somebody else etc take the the -'s of the possessive on the *else* ". It seems that spellcheckers are about a hundred years behind the time on this one.

As has been pointed out, passer-by is sometimes hyphenated (British dictionaries), and sometimes not (in some American dictionaries), yet it's the passer part that always gets the S. So whether or not it's hyphenated is not where the answer lies.

Incidentally, *by* here, is not an adjective, but an adverb. As are the second parts in the examples such as *push ups* that BrockawayBaby gives.

And as Brockaway Baby shows, compound nouns ending in adverbs usually take the s at the end; passers-by seems to be a bit of an exception here.

And the S goes doesn't depend on the the grammatical nature of the components either. For example, from the phrasal verb break out, we get outbreaks, but also breakouts. On the former the verb part gets the S, on the latter, it's the adverb that gets it.

With compound nouns made up of two nouns or an adjective and noun combination, its is usually the the second word that is pluralised, but not always:

major-generals and staff sergeants, but attorneys general and sergeants-major - it depends on which word is classifying which - a major-general is a type of general and a staff sergeant a type of sergeant, but an attorney general is a type of attorney and a sergeant-major is also a type of sergeant. Other examples of the second type - Knights Templar, courts-martial.

We have to think what the main word in the compound is, rather than position. So we have mothers-in-law, but stepmothers and grandmothers, all types of mother.

Also, things change - traditionally it was teaspoonsful (which I would probably say, but which is being red-lined). Increasingly, however, people are saying teaspoonfuls (which my browser seems to prefer).

@Hairy Scot - I think your reference to your own question is really more about 'have' vs 'have got', whereas this thread is mainly concerned with whether it's possible to contract 'have' when it's the main or lexical verb (rather than an auxiliary). As well as the other PITE reference I gave above, there's also a discussion here:

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/7636/can-you-contract-the-main-verb-in-a-sentence

The idea there, which Skeeter Lewis also mentioned in that other PITE thread, seems to be that it's OK to contract 'have' when is not carrying the main stress (or accent) or focus. For example:

"I've a dog" - probably doesn't work. On the other hand - "Wait a minute, I've an idea" works when the stress is on "I"

Similarly, when someone answers the question "Are we taking the car?" with "I've a taxi waiting at the corner", it does seem to work, because the focus is on "a taxi waiting at the corner", not on "have".

"I've to go now" doesn't sound very natural, but in the following exchange I think "I've to" sounds fine:

"When will he tell you if you've got the job?" - "I've to phone him tomorrow" -the focus is on "tomorrow", not on "have".

Negatives - no problems here - "I haven't a clue" is a perfectly good (if not better) alternative (in BrE at least) to "I don't have a clue" - and perhaps even more natural than "I haven't got a clue" - (For example, there's a BBC Radio programme called "I'm sorry, I haven't a clue")

Have + no - also seems to lend itself to contracting where the stress is on "no", or the focus is on the rest of the sentence - "I've no idea", "They've no tickets left".

On that other point, I know you prefer 'have to' to 'have got to', but for many of us it's horses for courses, 'have to' for written or more formal English, and 'have got to' for normal spoken English. And also they're not entirely interchangable: we don't usually use 'have got to' for general obligation, for example - "Usually I have to start work at 9, but tomorrow I've got to go in a bit earlier.". As for 'I've got' and 'I have', most of the usage books and course books I've got suggest that 'I've got' is more natural in spoken language. And both of them can only be used in the present. :)

@Patrick James McKee - this has turned out to be a really interesting question, and one which I'm sure has already interested linguists. In fact, it's one of the better ones I've come across on this forum (to reference another post on this website), as it involves a bit of real thinking rather than just 'I'm right and you're wrong' type arguments.

These terms seem to be British, but I (a Brit) hadn't heard them before, and I think they're probably more technical terms.They're both in Oxford Online:

overbridge - a bridge over a railway/railroad or road
underbridge - a bridge spanning an opening under a railway or road.

This suggests to me that an overbridge takes the road or whatever to a higher level to cross something at ground level, whereas an underbridge takes the road at the same level over something passing at below the existing ground level.

At first this example sentence form Oxford seems a bit confusing - "The overbridge was built to replace an underbridge which restricted lorry access" - But I think what it means is that previously a road went under the road in question, which stayed at the same level it was on either side. But as this didn't give enough headroom for lorries, a new bridge was built, which raised the level of the road in question to a higher level - hence an underbridge.

On the other hand here are the definitions from a glossary of civil engineering terms, which suggests that the terms over and under are relative to a railway.:

overbridge - a bridge that spans a railway - ie. something goes over a railway
underbridge - A bridge that supports a railway track over a road, river or other obstruction - ie something goes under a railway

http://www.rgsonline.co.uk/Railway_Group_Standards/Infrastructure/Codes%20of%20Practice/GCRC5603%20Iss%201.pdf

Here's an example of the more traditional use of 'reach out', from William Dalrymple writing in today's Guardian - "The efforts of Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister, to reach out to India may strengthen the hand of the moderates in Delhi.". But then again, maybe he's just been trying to phone them!