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Re: Have Had, Had Have

From:Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Date:Tuesday, July 13, 2004, 12:29
On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 10:31:18 +0100, Joe <joe@...> wrote:
> Philip Newton wrote: > > >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". > > Okay, I wasn't actually sure of the past participle of 'müssen', you > see, so I looked it up, and my dictionary claimed it was 'gemusst'. Or > is the conditional perfect different from the normal one?
The morphology is undoubtedly fine; it's the syntax I'm not comfortable with. For starters, I'm having trouble thinking of a situation involving the past participle of 'müssen'; I'd usually use it in the present or imperfect -- or the infinitive. I think it's only used in the perfect with a perfect form (i.e. with the participle) if it's acting as a full verb, with the "real" full verb unexpressed. For example, "Ich hätte da hingemusst" = "I would have had to there" (literally) - with "gehen" = "to go" unexpressed (i.e. "I would have had to go there"). However, adding the full verb, the correct syntax for me is "Ich hätte da hingehen müssen", with "müssen" in the infinitive, not in the past participle. Compare also: "Das hättest du nicht gemusst" and "Das hättest du nicht tun müssen" for "You needn't have done that", once without and once with the full verb "tun". In general, German uses the infinitive for modal verbs in such situations which otherwise would require the past participle: "Ich hatte ihn nicht sehen dürfen" (past perfect/pluperfect), "Ich habe lange warten müssen" (present perfect), "Ich hätte das nicht essen sollen" (conditional) -- not *"Ich hatte ihn nicht sehen gedurft", *"Ich habe lange warten gemusst", *"Ich hätte das nicht essen gesollt(?)". Cheers, -- Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>