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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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… crap.
So what do you make of the go in my example He will go to the house? It's clearly in the same position as, e.g., the to do in He is going to do his homework, another perphrastic future, this time in go.
¿? But: "He will do his homework."
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¿? But: "He will do his homework."
Exactly. The periphrastic future in go uses the form of the infinitive with to. The periphrastic future in will does not. Doesn't stop the version without the to from being an infinitive. I changed the example sentence to avoid using go in both the future marker and the base verb of the sentence.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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¿? But: "He will do his homework."
Exactly. The periphrastic future in go uses the form of the infinitive with to. The periphrastic future in will does not. Doesn't stop the version without the to from being an infinitive. I changed the example sentence to avoid using go in both the future marker and the base verb of the sentence.
Hmm. It's going to take me a little while to figure out what you're saying. In the meantime, I think my grammar primer distinguishes between the base and infinitive forms, that is, it does not allow that the base and infinitive are the same form. I think this is what my question stems from.
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So what do you make of the go in my example He will go to the house? It's clearly in the same position as, e.g., the to do in He is going to do his homework, another perphrastic future, this time in go.
No, it is not in the same position. Will and shall are auxiliary verbs for the future tense, also known as modal verbs. There is absolutely nothing periphrastic about either one.
http://www.mauspfeil.net/Shall+and+will.html
As to the construction "I am going to do my homework" it is NOT going plus an infinitive "to do", rather it is a "future tense future": "going to" plus a verb. See in this respect:
http://www.mauspfeil.net/Going-to_future.html
BTW, this web site is chock full of interesting stuff. Tons and tons of it. Another itneresting article is at:
http://www.mauspfeil.net/prescription_and%20description.html
TEd
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> chock full or check here: prescription and description jes' being a snit...
formerly known as etaoin...
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So what do you make of the go in my example He will go to the house? It's clearly in the same position as, e.g., the to do in He is going to do his homework, another perphrastic future, this time in go.
No, it is not in the same position. Will and shall are auxiliary verbs for the future tense, also known as modal verbs. There is absolutely nothing periphrastic about either one.
That's just what periphrastic means in this context. A non-periphrastic (or inflected) future construction would be one where the verb was used with some future marker built in. Spanish, for example, has both periphrastic and inflected futures, e.g., va a hacer (he is going to do, where hacer is the infinitive) and hará. We don't have the inflected future in English. If you don't like "going to do", how about "he wants to do his homework"? This would be a periphrastic construction of mood, rather than tense, but the principle is the same. The German would be er möchte seine Schularbeiten machen, where machen is the infinitive.
If you want to call one form of the infinitive the base form and reserve the term infinitive for the infinitive preceded by the preposition to, that's OK by me, I guess. I'll stick to calling them both infinitive.
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About "used to", I've only ever learnt (and taught) that this was used to talk about past states, habits or conditions which are now finished, in affirmative sentences ("I used to play in the park"). In negative and interrogative sentences, which require auxiliaries and therefore a "base form" of the lexical verb, you can express the "past habit" part with adverbs such as "never", "usually", "always" etc. ("I didn't usually play in the park", "I never played in the park", "Did you always play in the park"?).
No, those sentences would express a different meaning, Marianna.
I didn't usually play in the park.
I didn't use to play in the park.
The first sentence simply refers to a past habit, while the second contrasts it with the present -- I didn't use to play in the park (but now I do).
It's ok to have 'used to' in negatives and interrogatives, though 'never used to' is probably more common than 'didn't use to'.
I never used to watch TV so much.
I didn't use to watch TV so much.
Never used to probably contrasts the present with the whole of my past life, while didn't use to might contrast the present with a particular past period in my life .
I suspect that used to is more common in negative questions than positive ones:
Didn't you use to have a motorbike?
But that is more a matter of semantics than grammar. We are more likely to want to contrast past and present states/habits in a negative question than in a positive one.
Bingley
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But that is more a matter of semantics than grammar. We are more likely to want to contrast past and present states/habits in a negative question than in a positive one.
Or we are more likely to expect a positive answer to a negatively phrased question and a negative answer to a positively phrased one:
Didn't you use to have a motorbike?
Yeah, back in the '70s, when I was young and crazy.
Did you use to have a motorbike?
Nope, never. You wouldn't catch me on one of them death traps
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addict
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Thanks so much for your comment, Bingley... Let’s see... I see why you say that "I never used to play in the park" is a negative sentence, as it is definitely one in terms of meaning (something was NOT so). However, in terms of grammatical structure, it is no different from “I always used to play in the park”, because the verb form is not in the negative. It is this that I was referring to earlier: when you make a negative form of a verb, it requires an auxiliary “do” plus a negative particle “not” and then the base form of the lexical verb. So in fact I was very wrong in citing this as an example of “negative” sentence, because I was really only considering the negative structure of the verb phrase itself. I see that now.
However, the point in question was “didn’t use to” and “did / didn’t [noun / pronoun] use to…?”. As you say, “I didn’t use to watch TV so much” is less frequent than “I never used to watch TV so much”, and I’d suggest that this is because the first is actually not so correct. As I said before, what we learn as EFL students is that “used to” can only be used in affirmative structures in the past tense. I am adventuring here, but perhaps native speakers are reluctant to use the negative and interrogative structures of this verb because they are consciously or unconsciously aware of this norm?
(I will say, though, that while “I didn’t use to go to the park” and “Did you use to go to the park?” sound wrong to me, “Didn’t you use to go to the park?” sounds not-so-wrong. I don’t really know why…)
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Thanks so much for your comment, Bingley... Let’s see... I see why you say that "I never used to play in the park" is a negative sentence, as it is definitely one in terms of meaning (something was NOT so). However, in terms of grammatical structure, it is no different from “I always used to play in the park”, because the verb form is not in the negative. It is this that I was referring to earlier: when you make a negative form of a verb, it requires an auxiliary “do” plus a negative particle “not” and then the base form of the lexical verb. So in fact I was very wrong in citing this as an example of “negative” sentence, because I was really only considering the negative structure of the verb phrase itself. I see that now.
No, it might be grammatically equivalent but the adverb never is negative, just as is the adverb not. The fact that one uses the auxiliary in the one case does not change that fact.
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However, the point in question was “didn’t use to” and “did / didn’t [noun / pronoun] use to…?”. As you say, “I didn’t use to watch TV so much” is less frequent than “I never used to watch TV so much”, and I’d suggest that this is because the first is actually not so correct. As I said before, what we learn as EFL students is that “used to” can only be used in affirmative structures in the past tense. I am adventuring here, but perhaps native speakers are reluctant to use the negative and interrogative structures of this verb because they are consciously or unconsciously aware of this norm?
I don't know if the one is more or less common than the other. As a native speaker I don't hear either choice as being wrong. You wouldn't use "used to" in the negative in the past tense because the auxiliary verb takes the tense marker as well as the negative adverb so you use, if you will, the base form of the verb "use".
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(I will say, though, that while “I didn’t use to go to the park” and “Did you use to go to the park?” sound wrong to me, “Didn’t you use to go to the park?” sounds not-so-wrong. I don’t really know why…)
You hear those all the time. There's nothing wrong with them. You certainly won't be likely to hear "Used you to go to the park?"
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