daijobu Posted June 4, 2013 Share Posted June 4, 2013 From Practice Town... The acrid smoke pervaded everything; we had to leave the city. HAD is shown as an action verb predicate and TO LEAVE THE CITY is an infinitive phrase acting as the direct object. Can someone explain this a bit? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kuovonne Posted June 4, 2013 Share Posted June 4, 2013 I like Violet's answer better than my attempt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daijobu Posted June 4, 2013 Author Share Posted June 4, 2013 It might be tempting to think of "had" as a helping verb, but it is not in this case, because "to leave" is in the infinitive. If there sentence were "We had left the city." Then "had" would be a helping verb, and "left" would be the main verb, with "the city" as the direct object. Notice the difference between "to leave" and "left". Yes, that's it exactly. I have a hard time identifying helping verbs and distinguishing them from action verbs, especially when placed next to a verbal phrase. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Violet Crown Posted June 6, 2013 Share Posted June 6, 2013 From Practice Town... The acrid smoke pervaded everything; we had to leave the city. HAD is shown as an action verb predicate and TO LEAVE THE CITY is an infinitive phrase acting as the direct object. Can someone explain this a bit? Another reason to toss on the pile of reasons I stopped using MCT. This is nonsense. (ETA: Not your post; their explanation.) "Have to" is a modal. It is not the same verb as the possessive "have." You can hear this difference easily, as the v in "have to" is generally unvoiced ("hafta") whereas the v in the possessive "have" is never unvoiced. That "have to" is a modal becomes clear if you substitute modals "must" or "could": We must leave the city. We could leave the city. We have to leave the city. You can see clearly here that "to leave" isn't an infinitive; the "to" is part of the modal "have to," and "leave" is just your main verb. To get the past tense in English, we use "had to" as the other modal forms are unavailable. We had to leave the city. [interestingly, you can see (or really, hear) the same devoicing pattern in the modals "supposed to" and "used to." Say the following pairs out loud and listen to the final consonant sound: I supposed she was right. They're supposed to listen. /zd/ -> /st/ [edited for clarity] You used the last roll. She used to love me.] As a final bit of evidence that the "to" isn't part of an infinitive "to leave" but is part of "had to," consider: We had to leave the city; but you don't have to. vs. *We had to leave the city; but you don't have. *We had to leave the city; but you don't have that. If "leave" is part of an infinitive construction, then we should be able to say one of the latter sentences. Compare some sentences in which "to leave" really is an infinitive: We tried to leave the city; but you don't try. We tried to leave the city; but you don't try that. We wanted to leave the city; but you don't want that. We started to leave the city; but you don't start. You see how there's an ellipsis or "that" permissible in those sentences, where the infinitive "to leave" would go? But we can't take "to leave" out of "we had to leave" or "you have to leave," because "to" is a necessary part of the modal, not part of an infinitive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Violet Crown Posted June 6, 2013 Share Posted June 6, 2013 Just one further distinction. We see in this discussion three different words had (have). 1. Verb, meaning to possess: You have a city filled with smoke. 2. Auxiliary, forming the perfect aspect: We had seen the city was filling up with zombies. 3. Modal, expressing necessity: They have to be the fastest zombies I've ever seen. All three are getting confused here. The question "We had what?" (mentioned above) invites an object to the verb "had," and wouldn't take an infinitive as its object. Soldier 1: You'll never guess what we had. Soldier 2: Oh? We had what? Soldier 1: We had ... zombies. Soldier 2 doesn't expect a reply "We had ... fired on the undead" or "We had ... to run like heck," because the "had" that takes an object is neither the auxiliary "had" nor the modal "had to." Only the verb showing possession takes an object. Kuovonne is right to distinguish "had to" from the auxiliary "had," as in "We had left the city," because in that sentence "had" is providing the perfect aspect to "left." But we don't then have to conclude that all that's left is the verb "had" and start looking around for its object; instead, we see that "had to" here is the modal showing necessity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daijobu Posted June 6, 2013 Author Share Posted June 6, 2013 Thank you, Violet. For someone like me who is learning grammar (we didn't get THIS far in high school) alongside dd, this is fascinating. And disturbing, because your explanation makes way more sense than MCT's. I'm glad my dd's instincts were right that it didn't seem like an infinitive, but we couldn't figure out what it was. MCT doesn't even mention modals in his text. I wish I was brave enough to post this to the MCT yahoogroup, but I don't think I understand this as deeply as you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Violet Crown Posted June 6, 2013 Share Posted June 6, 2013 Your dd should trust her instincts. The central difference between the traditional grammar as taught by MCT (and unfortunately every other program out there) and the approaches to grammar that linguists have been using for the past century is precisely that: as native speakers of the language, we already have well-formed intuitions/instincts about how it works. The goal is not to form rules and categories and shoehorn the language into them, but to examine the rules of language that we actually use to speak and comprehend. So as a native speaker, your dd is in an expert position to notice when the supposed rules don't seem right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danielle1746 Posted June 6, 2013 Share Posted June 6, 2013 Violet Crown, wow. I am in awe! I really and truly had FUN reading your explanations. Thank you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Violet Crown Posted June 6, 2013 Share Posted June 6, 2013 It's the zombies that make grammar all come together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giraffe Posted June 6, 2013 Share Posted June 6, 2013 Having just spent a month learning grammar to teach ESL, I am on Violet's side in this. "Had to" is a modal verb. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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