Re: Have Had, Had Have

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@...>