Re: Why my conlangs SUCK!!!

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:
>
> > On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 04:17:58PM +0100, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > > I was intending to include a meta-comment on the verbal cluster the the
> > first
> > > sentence of the above paragraph, to the effect it robs anglophones of the
> > > right to complain about lengthy verb strings in German (and Swedish, for
> > that
> > > matter), but refrained to, since on further reflection I'm not positive
> > it's
> > > kosher English. So I'll content myself with a meta-meta-comment.
> >
> > I'm pretty sure "would have ought to be" isn't kosher, if only because
> > "ought" is a defective verb with no past participle form.
>
> And the kosher replacement would be?
'It would've been', 'it should've been', 'it ought to've been' all work,
the last one tentatively, and all three with different meanings. Less
kosherly, 'would have ought to have been' sounds much better to me than
'would have ought to be', but that only makes your point the worse :)

--
Tristan