Re: CHAT: return of the long-lost (was: RE: THEORY/USAGE: irregular English plurals

On Wed, 29 May 2002 12:44:16 +0200, Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:

>En réponse à Andrew Smith <andrew.smith20@...>:
>
>>
>> By the way, your "used you to" question above sounds very strange to me,
>> but
>> now more pressing is that I can't decide how to write the answer:
>> a) "I did use to" or
>> b) "I did used to".
>>
>> Clearly, using the emphatic "did" instead of the basic past normally
>> requires a basic verb "use", yet "used to" now appears to me to be
>> fossilised, and so I have a strong aversion to changing it in any way.
>> Help!
>>
>
>Well, my opinion is only the one of a non-native English speaker, but it
may be
>interested for you all to know how I (and my fellow French students) were
>taught how to use the expression "used to".
>
>Basically, we were taught that "used to" behaved mostly like an auxiliary
verb,
>like "can", "will" and such (unlike "to be used to" which takes the -ing
form),
>except that it cannot make interrogative or negative sentences. You have to
use
>the "to be used to +ing" form to supplete for the lack. Now the discussion
>makes me wonder whether this is is really done by native speakers. So, was
I
>taught nonsense, or is it really a good way to supplete for the missing
forms
>of "used to" and prevent the appearance of forms that look awkward for many
>speakers?
>
>Christophe.
>
>http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
>
>Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.
That's very interesting, but I'm not sure it's quite right. There may be
a(nother) difference between written and spoken language which accounts for
my reticence in writing these down, but:

1a. I used to climb mountains.
1b. Used you to climb mountains?
1c. I used not to climb mountains, (but now I do).

The interrogative in 1b sounds odd to me, though And's use of exactly this
construction kicked off the discussion, so it's not completely dead. 1c, on
the other hand, is perfectly fine to me, though maybe I would also say:

1d. I didn't use(d) to climb mountains, (but now I do).

I think this is written with "didn't use to" in Britain, but again it feels
somehow better to write "didn't used to", which John says is American
standard.

Anyway, if I understand you right, you were taught that 1b and 1c should be
replaced by:

2b. Were you used to climbing mountains?
2c. I wasn't used to climbing mountains.

These again are good sentences, but they don't seem to mean the same thing
as 1b and 1c, in my opinion. The sentences in 1 refer to events in the past
which were repeated or habitual, while those in 2 refer to things which were
familiar or the subject had experience in.

Obviously these meanings are related, because things which you do habitually
tend to become familiar to you, but there is a difference (I think), so it's
not really a suppletion, more an approximation.

Andrew

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