Re: Have Had, Had Have

On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 07:44:51 +0100, Joe <joe@...> wrote:
> Now, the construction 'I'd've had to have eaten' is perfectly
> grammatical to me.  It's the  perfect of 'I would have to eat'.  (In
> French, 'j'aurais dû manger', German, 'ich hätte essen gemusst').
That's not grammatical for this German speaker - I'd make it "ich
hätte essen müssen", which I'd translate as "I should have eaten" or
perhaps "I had to have eaten".

> Is it possible in German or French to say 'Ich hätte gegessen haben
> gemusst'(and yes, it did take me a little while to work out the word
> order), or 'J'aurais dû avoir mangé', or, even better, 'Ich hätte
> gegessen haben müssen geworden haben gemusst'(Yes, it's scary and
> confusing), or 'J'aurais dû être allé devoir avoir mangé'
I could imagine the second (longer) German sentence, but only in a
jocular context where people aren't exactly sure of which modals are
applicable and just toss a few in for good measure. "Ich hätte
gegessen haben müssen, sollen haben tun gemusst" might be another
variation. I don't think one can assign a specific meaning to such an
utterance, though.

The first German sentence sounds... weird. But I'm not sure whether I
could call it wrong.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

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