used to
Supavadee Udomchairassamee
If I want to change "you used to go there" to the question , what's it
gonna be : "did you use to go there?" or "do you used to go there?" ?
Another thing is "secretariat is yet to be set up". What does it mean?
I don't understand the use of "yet".
have a wonderful day! :>
Brian J Goggin
On Wed, 22 Jan 1997 20:22:08 GMT, bba...@ix.netcom.com (B.W. Battin)
wrote:
>On 21 Jan 1997 11:53:34 GMT, Supavadee Udomchairassamee
>To me, "used to" sounds a little awkward in question form, but if you
>do use it that way, you would say, "Did you used to go there?" Or
>possibly, "Didn't you used to go there?"
>
>I think it would sound much better, however, to say something like,
>"Did you go there at one time?"
In Ireland, you might say "Used you go there?" However, the
construction is awkward; I'd try to avoid it.
bjg
B.W. Battin
>If I want to change "you used to go there" to the question , what's it
>gonna be : "did you use to go there?" or "do you used to go there?" ?
> Another thing is "secretariat is yet to be set up". What does it mean?
>I don't understand the use of "yet".
>
>have a wonderful day! :>
To me, "used to" sounds a little awkward in question form, but if you
do use it that way, you would say, "Did you used to go there?" Or
possibly, "Didn't you used to go there?"
I think it would sound much better, however, to say something like,
"Did you go there at one time?"
BWB
Ralph M Jones
It sounds right, but I don't know why. How did that usage of "used"
come into use anyway?
Brian J Goggin
On Wed, 22 Jan 1997 17:25:47 -0600, Ralph M Jones <rmj...@hal-pc.org>
wrote:
I guess people just got used to it.
bjg
Mirabelle Severn & Thames
On Wed, 22 Jan 1997 20:22:08 GMT, bba...@ix.netcom.com (B.W. Battin)
wrote:
>On 21 Jan 1997 11:53:34 GMT, Supavadee Udomchairassamee
><u371...@student.chula.edu> wrote:
>>If I want to change "you used to go there" to the question , what's it
>>gonna be : "did you use to go there?" or "do you used to go there?" ?
>To me, "used to" sounds a little awkward in question form, but if you
>do use it that way, you would say, "Did you used to go there?" Or
>possibly, "Didn't you used to go there?"
Well, *I* wouldn't. I would say "Did you use to go there?"
"Did you used to go there?" sounds as though the past tense
is created twice - once with "Did" and once with "used". Is
my grammar-instinct forsaking me, here? (Didn't we just have
this discussion a couple of weeks ago? I don't remember what
the consensus was.)
>>I think it would sound much better, however, to say something like,
>>"Did you go there at one time?"
This would sound very stilted to me in speech. However, "Did
you use[d] to go there?" is obviously troublesome to write, and
I would probably rewrite the sentence if I were expressing the
idea in formal writing. "Did you go there often/regularly [when
you were a child]/[when you lived in the area]/[while you were
visiting your grandmother]?"
>>> Another thing is "secretariat is yet to be set up". What does it mean?
>>>I don't understand the use of "yet".
I don't understand this sentence, either. How about "The
secretariat has yet to be set up", where "yet" is basically
a synonym for "still": "The secretariat still has to be set
up".
Naomi Brokaw
from California's central coast
Richard M. Alderson III
In article <5c2anu$r...@enterprise.netserv.chula.ac.th>
Supavadee Udomchairassamee <u371...@student.chula.edu> writes:
>If I want to change "you used to go there" to the question , what's it gonna
>be: "did you use to go there?" or "do you used to go there?" ?
The first of the two, with the proviso that you continue to pronounce _use_ as
[jus] and not [juz]. However, as others have pointed out, it would be better
to rephrase completely so as not to use (here, [juz]) the idiom.
>Another thing is "secretariat is yet to be set up". What does it mean? I
>don't understand the use of "yet".
Perhaps it will help if the sentence is rephrased as "The secretariat has not
been set up yet." In these sentences, "yet" is an time adverb referring to an
expected future time in which an event or action which has not occurred at the
time of speaking/writing will have occurred.
--
Rich Alderson You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
what not.
--J. R. R. Tolkien,
alde...@netcom.com _The Notion Club Papers_
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
In article <5c2anu$r...@enterprise.netserv.chula.ac.th>, Supavadee
Udomchairassamee <u371...@student.chula.edu> writes:
> If I want to change "you used to go there" to the question , what's it
> gonna be : "did you use to go there?" or "do you used to go there?" ?
In speech, few Americans voice the "s" is "use", (probably under the influence
of the unvoiced "t" in "to"; thus it is usually quite ambiguous as to whether
what is said is "did you use to?" or "did you used to?". But in writing, we
can't take advantage of this ambiguity; we must get off the fence on one side
or t'other.
If I want to change "you flew a kite" to a question, I make it "did you fly a
kite?". If I want to change "you won the race" to a question, I make it "did
you win the race?" So the pattern is that the question form with "do" uses the
congjugated form of "do" as the tense marker, and uses the reduced infinitive
form of the main verb. Thus, the question form of "you used to go there" would
be "did you use to go there?".
> Another thing is "secretariat is yet to be set up". What does it mean?
> I don't understand the use of "yet".
Try leaving out the "yet". "[The] secretariat is to be set up" would mean that
there are unexecuted plans to set up a secretariat. "Yet" equates to "still";
it implies that a condition has existed for some time. So inserting "yet"
says that not only are there unexecuted plans to set up a secretariat, but
implies that these plans have existed unexecuted for some time. However, it is
also possible that "yet" is merely serving as an intensifier here.
Gary Williams
WILL...@AHECAS.AHEC.EDU
John M. Lawler
Mirabelle Severn & Thames <nao...@sco.COM> writes:
>bba...@ix.netcom.com (B.W. Battin) writes:
>Supavadee Udomchairassamee <u371...@student.chula.edu> writes:
>>>If I want to change "you used to go there" to the question , what's it
>>>gonna be : "did you use to go there?" or "do you used to go there?" ?
>>To me, "used to" sounds a little awkward in question form, but if you
>>do use it that way, you would say, "Did you used to go there?" Or
>>possibly, "Didn't you used to go there?"
>Well, *I* wouldn't. I would say "Did you use to go there?"
>"Did you used to go there?" sounds as though the past tense
>is created twice - once with "Did" and once with "used". Is
>my grammar-instinct forsaking me, here? (Didn't we just have
>this discussion a couple of weeks ago? I don't remember what
>the consensus was.)
I wouldn't either, Naomi. Though the problem only arises in writing, like
many English problems. In speech, the idiomatic auxiliary "used to" is
*always* pronounced /yust@/, with a voiceless /-st-/ cluster, while the
normal pronunciation of the past participle of "use" is *always*
pronounced /yuzd/, with a voiced /-zd/ cluster.
It's very easy to tell the difference, and -- here's the fun part --
there's no way to distinguish the erstwhile "past tense" or "past
participle" of /yust@/ from its ostensible "present", because the final
/-d/ would get swallowed up in the /-st-/ cluster and disappear anyway.
(I put the technical terms in scare quotes because it's not clear they're
applicable with /yust@/)
Supavadee's original question was about how you form a question with
/yust@/, and my answer is that most native English speakers avoid
doing that, for precisely the reasons you document here.
>>>I think it would sound much better, however, to say something like,
>>>"Did you go there at one time?"
>This would sound very stilted to me in speech. However, "Did
>you use[d] to go there?" is obviously troublesome to write, and
>I would probably rewrite the sentence if I were expressing the
>idea in formal writing. "Did you go there often/regularly [when
>you were a child]/[when you lived in the area]/[while you were
>visiting your grandmother]?"
Right. /yust@/ is much more conversational in register, and gets written
much less, which is one reason why a good convention for its inflected
parts hasn't arisen. Another reason is that /yust@/ is close to being an
inflection itself (if you were a tense collector, you could pin /yust@/ in
your cigar box and label it "past habitual"), and it doesn't sound right
to inflect an inflection, unless there's a full syntactic system already
set up, as there is in the past perfect, in which "have" really represents
past, and is then put in the past tense as "had" to refer to "the past of
a past", as in
He had already left by the time I arrived.
Jim McCawley's classic article "Tense and Time Reference in English"
(which appeared in the journal Language in the early 70's) nails down
the modern English perfect system beautifully.
>>>> Another thing is "secretariat is yet to be set up". What does it mean?
>>>> I don't understand the use of "yet".
>I don't understand this sentence, either. How about "The
>secretariat has yet to be set up", where "yet" is basically
>a synonym for "still": "The secretariat still has to be set
>up".
Normally "yet" doesn't appear in preverbal position, but when it does it's
idiomatic, in the sense that it combines only with certain auxiliaries
(notably "have" and "be"), and only appears with infinitive constructions,
which jointly produce the idioms "have yet to" and "be yet to", which both
mean that events described by the following infinitive are expected but
not actual. Frequently this is ironic, like the "Real Soon Now" shipment
date for new software.
But you *do* need the article on "secretariat"; without the article, it's
the name of a race horse, not a bureaucratic organization.
-John Lawler http://www.lsa.umich.edu/ling/jlawler/ U Michigan Linguistics
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a - Edward Sapir
mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations." Language (1921)
B.W. Battin
On 23 Jan 97 07:21:26 MST, will...@ahecas.ahec.edu (Gary Williams,
Business Services Accounting) wrote:
>
>In speech, few Americans voice the "s" is "use", (probably under the influence
>of the unvoiced "t" in "to"; thus it is usually quite ambiguous as to whether
>what is said is "did you use to?" or "did you used to?". But in writing, we
>can't take advantage of this ambiguity; we must get off the fence on one side
>or t'other.
>
>If I want to change "you flew a kite" to a question, I make it "did you fly a
>kite?". If I want to change "you won the race" to a question, I make it "did
>you win the race?" So the pattern is that the question form with "do" uses the
>congjugated form of "do" as the tense marker, and uses the reduced infinitive
>form of the main verb. Thus, the question form of "you used to go there" would
>be "did you use to go there?".
>
Enlightenment. Having just read that explanation, I see that my
solution to the problem was incorrect. But the right way sure sounds
weird. I can't imagine myself--or anyone else for that
matter--writing "Did you use to go there?" My ear rebels.
BWB
Keith C. Ivey
nao...@sco.COM (Mirabelle Severn & Thames) wrote:
>bba...@ix.netcom.com (B.W. Battin) wrote:
>>To me, "used to" sounds a little awkward in question form, but if you
>>do use it that way, you would say, "Did you used to go there?" Or
>>possibly, "Didn't you used to go there?"
>
>Well, *I* wouldn't. I would say "Did you use to go there?"
>"Did you used to go there?" sounds as though the past tense
>is created twice - once with "Did" and once with "used".
You're right, but the question is really about spelling, not
sound, since "used to" in "I used to go" and "use to" in "Did
you use to go?" are both pronounced /'jus t@/.
Keith C. Ivey <kci...@cpcug.org> Washington, DC
Contributing Editor/Webmaster
The Editorial Eye <http://www.eeicom.com/eye/>
Ralph M Jones
>
> BWB
I agree with your ear.
My concern is with the usage of _either_ "used" or "use" in the sense of
being a verb which in conjunction with the immediately following
infinitive creates some sort of past definite tense.
I will now stop stomping through this mine field with my hands over my
ears and ask for one of you kind souls to bail me out. I used to use
that usage but this is the last time.
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
In article <5cnumc$i...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>, ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk (K. Edgcombe)
writes:
> I would simply say "Used you to go there?" Is this a peculiar UK usage?
_This_ Yank's never heard it.
Gary Williams
WILL...@AHECAS.AHEC.EDU
K. Edgcombe
In article <32e9b509...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
B.W. Battin <bba...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>Enlightenment. Having just read that explanation, I see that my
>solution to the problem was incorrect. But the right way sure sounds
>weird. I can't imagine myself--or anyone else for that
>matter--writing "Did you use to go there?" My ear rebels.
I have been waiting for someone to come up with what would be my standard
solution to this one; apologies if someone already has and I missed it.
I would simply say "Used you to go there?" Is this a peculiar UK usage?
Katy
Steve Lewin
In message <5cnumc$i...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>
ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk (K. Edgcombe) writes:
> Katy
It certainly sounds peculiar in my part of the UK, though I suspect
that was not what you meant. I just might write "Used you to" but I
would never say it. I would say something that sounds to me like "Did
you use to go" which sounds perfectly ok to me. However I wouldn't
really know if I'd said "use to" or "used to". Almost a definition of
sloppy speech I suspect.
I wonder if there are many more of these phrases where it is almost
impossible to write what one (well this one at least) finds perfectly
easy to say. Perhaps these are at least partly to blame for some of
the strange pronunciation spellings and grammars that we meet.
Steve
barbara.@bookpro.com
ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk (K. Edgcombe) wrote:
<snip>
>I would simply say "Used you to go there?" Is this a peculiar UK usage?
It would be considered very peculiar in the US. In fact, if you said
that here, the response would probably be "Huh?" (or something more
polite), and you would have to repeat yourself, then reword it as your
American listener(s) looked baffled.
BWillette
Gregory Resch
barbara.@bookpro.com writes:
> ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk (K. Edgcombe) wrote:
> > . . .I would simply say "Used you to go there?" Is this a peculiar
> > UK usage?
> It would be considered very peculiar in the US. . . .
. . .Largely because of the Americans who live there, and who are rapidly
eschewing stilted-sounding statements that can instead be expressed in a
pre-digested form for faster comprehension: "Did you used to go there?"
By "pre-digested," I mean that Americans are coming to rely more and more
on word-at-a-time parsing to get the meaning of any statement, treating
the words like a fixed series of building blocks. I suspect it has to do
with shorter and shorter attention-spans. (Three guesses on what the
cause of *that* would be.)
But the other sentence is eminently correct, as shown by re-arranging
the same words into a form we all might use to express surprise at the
(very!) idea: "You used to go there?"
--
I just noticed that "peculiar" was used for two different meanings in the
quoted articles. That could be a whol-nother thread--but to little purpose.
Bob Cunningham
>In article <5cnumc$i...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>, ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk (K. Edgcombe)
>writes:
>
>> I would simply say "Used you to go there?" Is this a peculiar UK usage?
>
>_This_ Yank's never heard it.
>
I don't think I've ever heard it, but it's an interesting
construction because it's indicative of the more general usage of "use"
to mean "make it a practice" in earlier times. I've read somewhere that
it was once possible to say "He uses to go there".
Once the history of the word "use" in that sense is understood,
it's easier to understand why one says "He used to go there", but "He
didn't use to go there". We're still using "use" in the same old sense,
but in modern times it has become restricted to the past tense.
(Some people - including at least one highly respected a.u.e.
contributor - find it necessary to think of "used to" as a modal
auxiliary. To me that seems wrong.)
Keith C. Ivey
re...@cpcug.org (Gregory Resch) wrote:
>But the other sentence ["Used you to go there?"] is eminently
>correct, as shown by re-arranging the same words into a form we
>all might use to express surprise at the (very!) idea: "You
>used to go there?"
And of course "Tried you to go there?" and "Wanted you to go
there?" are also eminently correct, by the same logic.
Markus Laker
> >> I would simply say "Used you to go there?" Is this a peculiar UK usage?
From previous threads on a similar subject, I'd say it is. Furthermore,
I'd say it's specific to people of a certain age and above-average
education. I recognise it as standard British English but would never
use it myself.
Something else that British English has and American English hasn't is
this:
I used not to go there.
It has a strong implication that I now *do* go there: much stronger than
the implication carried by
I didn't use to go there.
Markus Laker.
--
If you quote me, I would appreciate an email copy of your article.
Ralph M Jones
Donna Richoux wrote:
>
> Steve Lewin <sle...@zetnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > In message <5cnumc$i...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>
> > ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk (K. Edgcombe) writes:
> > > I would simply say "Used you to go there?" Is this a peculiar UK usage?
>
> > that was not what you meant. I just might write "Used you to" but I
> > would never say it. I would say something that sounds to me like "Did
> > you use to go" which sounds perfectly ok to me. However I wouldn't
> > really know if I'd said "use to" or "used to". Almost a definition of
> > sloppy speech I suspect.
>
> of the previous word. If you heard someone say the following, would you
> have any doubt which of the two ways to spell them?
>
> She walked to the station.
> *She walk to the station.
>
> Did he talk to you?
> *Did he talked to you?
>
> I suppose someone will say, "Well, *I* pronounce those differently" but
> I don't think most folks do. It is our (unconscious) knowledge of
> grammar that tells us which word is being used.
>
> I vote for "Did you use to" because it matches "Did you want to," "Did
> you have to," etc. On the other hand, I might just as likely say "You
> used to..., didn't you?" That matches "You wanted to, didn't you?" and
> "You had to, didn't you?"
>
> I've never encountered K. Edgcomb's usage, except perhaps in very old
> English novels.
>
> Best wishes --- Donna Richoux
I agree. Aren't "did use" and "used" equivalent in that context?
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
In article <32f475b4...@news.tcp.co.uk>, la...@tcp.co.uk (Markus Laker)
writes:
> Something else that British English has and American English hasn't is
> this:
>
> I used not to go there.
But I think an American _could_ say, "I used to not go there." In other words,
for many (most?) Americans, the construction is not a verb + infinitive;
instead, "used to" is a tense/aspect marker that indicates habitual action (or,
in this case, non-action) in the past.
Gary Williams
WILL...@AHECAS.AHEC.EDU
Donna Richoux
Steve Lewin <sle...@zetnet.co.uk> wrote:
(who is pleased to report that she is once again receiving 100% of the
a.u.e. posts. Why? Well, I'm not sure, though I have a couple of
theories. Thanks for the advice.)
K. Edgcombe
In article <32f475b4...@news.tcp.co.uk>,
Markus Laker <la...@tcp.co.uk> wrote:
>> >In article <5cnumc$i...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>, ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk (K. Edgcombe)
>> >writes:
>
>> >> I would simply say "Used you to go there?" Is this a peculiar UK usage?
>
>I'd say it's specific to people of a certain age and above-average
>education. I recognise it as standard British English but would never
>use it myself.
Touchee (doesn't that look strange without the accent?). It would appear to be
not so much peculiar-UK as peculiar-KE. However, I really do say it; I caught
myself saying "Used you to sing tenor?" the other day. Probably I shall now
get self-conscious about it and start to find it difficult to know what I really
do say when I'm not looking, so to speak. I'll listen for what other people
say.
I still think it's a nice economical solution to the problem, but when did that
ever start a fashion?
Katy
John Davies
In article <5d29kh$e...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>, "K. Edgcombe"
<ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk> writes
[...]
> I would simply say "Used you to go there?" Is this a peculiar UK usage?
> It would appear to be
>not so much peculiar-UK as peculiar-KE.
You do yourself an injustice. It sounds a bit old-fashioned, I agree,
and is possibly brought on by reading too much Jane Austen (if that's
not an oxymoron) but I've heard it, and used it myself on occasion.
But as Brian J Goggin pointed out near the beginning of this thread,
it's fairly common in Ireland: I've certainly heard it there more than
in UK, so I have.
--
John Davies (jo...@redwoods.demon.co.uk)
On that of which one cannot speak, one must remain silent. (Wittgenstein)
Brian J Goggin
>In article <5d29kh$e...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>, "K. Edgcombe"
><ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk> writes
>[...]
>> I would simply say "Used you to go there?" Is this a peculiar UK usage?
>[...]
>> It would appear to be
>>not so much peculiar-UK as peculiar-KE.
[...]
>But as Brian J Goggin pointed out near the beginning of this thread,
>it's fairly common in Ireland: I've certainly heard it there more than
>in UK, so I have.
'Tis true for you, so 'tis.
One small point: Irish usage omits the 'to': "Used you go there?"
rather than "Used you to go there?"
bjg
Mark Brader
>>>>> I would simply say "Used you to go there?" Is this a peculiar UK usage?
> ... I really do say it; I caught myself saying "Used you to sing tenor?"
> the other day. Probably I shall now get self-conscious about it and
> start to find it difficult to know what I really do say when I'm not
> looking, so to speak.
> I still think it's a nice economical solution to the problem, but when
> did that ever start a fashion?
The trouble with it is that, for many of us, "used to" is effectively a
single word... the spelling we use just hasn't caught up with the fact.
(Well, one does see forms like "useta" or "usta" occasionally, but only
when the writer is showing someone's speech and wants to give the impression
that it's substandard or at least highly informal. Another example of the
same thing is "gonna" for "going to".)
"Used you to" gives me what must be the same feeling that those poor
people who never split infinitives must get when they see or hear
"to boldly go".
--
Mark Brader, m...@sq.com "Dr. Slipher, I have found your Planet X."
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto -- Clyde Tombaugh (1906-97), 1930-02-18
My text in this article is in the public domain.
Greg Resch
In article <32f3490f...@newsreader.digex.net>,
kci...@cpcug.org (Keith C. Ivey) wrote:
> re...@cpcug.org (Gregory Resch) wrote:
> > But the other sentence ["Used you to go there?"] is eminently correct,
> > as shown by re-arranging the same words into a form we all might use
> > to express surprise at the (very!) idea: "You used to go there?"
>
> And of course "Tried you to go there?" and "Wanted you to go there?"
> are also eminently correct, by the same logic.
But the logic behind that ignores the special application we make in
English of the idiomatic "used (to)." Furthermore, the alleged counter-
examples and especially the wording in question actually have a familiar
ring to them: "Used you to go there, m'Lord?" I'm not a Shakespearean
scholar (nor do I play one on the boards) but I should be surprised if
very similar phrasing can not readily be found more than once among the
plays. (The exercise is left to the reader.)
Thus "Used you to go there?" may be far from standard nowadays, but it
hardly deserves to be abjured as grammatically incorrect.
--
(Or more accurately, they "have a de Verean ring to them.")
Keith C. Ivey
>> And of course "Tried you to go there?" and "Wanted you to go there?"
>> are also eminently correct, by the same logic.
>
>But the logic behind that ignores the special application we make in
>English of the idiomatic "used (to)."
You are suggesting that "used to" should be treated like an
auxiliary verb in forming questions and negative statements.
That may be true in the UK, but it's not true in standard US
English, in which "do" is used just as it is with any other
ordinary verb. I don't see how the transatlantic difference is
connected with television or shrinking attention spans.
>Furthermore, the alleged counter-examples and especially the
>wording in question actually have a familiar ring to them:
>"Used you to go there, m'Lord?" [references to Shakespeare
>deleted]
Of course they do, but the way English forms questions and
negative statements has changed since Shakespeare's time.
Is that a sign of the decline of civilization?
Christopher Perrott
Greg Resch wrote:
>
> Thus "Used you to go there?" may be far from standard nowadays, but it
> hardly deserves to be abjured as grammatically incorrect.
Usedn't I to hear things like "Usedn't you to go there?" when I lived in
the UK?
--
Chris Perrott
Christopher Perrott
Keith C. Ivey wrote:
>
> re...@cpcug.org (Greg Resch) wrote:
>
> >Furthermore, the alleged counter-examples and especially the
> >wording in question actually have a familiar ring to them:
> >"Used you to go there, m'Lord?" [references to Shakespeare
> >deleted]
>
> Of course they do, but the way English forms questions and
> negative statements has changed since Shakespeare's time.
> Is that a sign of the decline of civilization?
Or you could say "Does that be a sign of the decline of civilization?"
Hmm, sounds odd to me.
--
Chris Perrott
Jonathan Paterson
A previous correspondent wrote:
>>>>>> I would simply say "Used you to go there?" Is this a peculiar UK usage?
Others pointed out that it may also be linked to a particular age
group and level of education. There was also some discussion of "I
used not to go there".
My mother, who would now be in her eighties and was Canadian-born but
educated in the U.K., certainly used both these forms. I don't think
she would ever have said "Did you use(d) to . . .?" or "didn't use(d)
to".
I would feel very uncomfortable saying "Used you to . . .?" and had no
objection to teaching "Did you use to . . . ?" to my EFL/ESL students,
but I suspect that in my own usage I tend to avoid both interrogative
forms and use "Did you use to . . . ?" only if "Did you . . . ?" alone
would be misleading or ambiguous.
However, I quite naturally use "used not to", and I think I would only
use "didn't use to" in extremely informal situations. I certainly do
not make any distinction in meaning between the two, such as one
correspondent suggested.
Do others share my hybrid idiolect? (I grew up and was educated in
England but have lived in Canada for more than 20 years).
Greg Resch
In article <32f686e...@newsreader.digex.net>,
kci...@cpcug.org (Keith C. Ivey) wrote:
> . . .That may be true in the UK, but it's not true in standard US
> English, in which "do" is used just as it is with any other
> ordinary verb. I don't see how the transatlantic difference is
> connected with television or shrinking attention spans.
(You allude there to an earlier follow-up of mine, not the one quoted.)
Sorry. It was crystal clear in my mind while I was composing; I just
didn't type the details in--something like this:
The comprehension scheme Americans use, more and more nowadays, works fine
for invariant vernacular phrasing, by parsing a single word at a time:
"Did. . ." [auxiliary verb]
"you. . ." [with (auxiliary) verb; therefore must be *subject*]
"used to. . ." [main verb; common, idiomatic phrase "did you used to. . ."
now forms a sensible phrase]
"go there?" [sentence complete; comprehension achieved 0.3 second
after last word spoken]
Contrast that with the intellectually more demanding need to "parse" a
complete thought all at once:
"Used. . ." [verb]
"you. . ." [pronoun following verb (here, word-at-a-timer would
think: "direct object?")]
"to go there?" [WAAT-dependent listener now confused; must mentally
revisit all words in order to make sense of them;
comprehension achieved no sooner than 1.8 seconds after
last word spoken; most likely response: "Duh?"]
> . . .the way English forms questions and negative statements has changed
> since Shakespeare's time. Is that a sign of the decline of civilization?
If you could have your choice, where would you like to live--
"Verona Beach," or Verona?
--
Markus Laker
John Davies <jo...@redwoods.demon.co.uk>:
> In article <5d29kh$e...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>, "K. Edgcombe"
> <ke...@cus.cam.ac.uk> writes
> [...]
> > I would simply say "Used you to go there?" Is this a peculiar UK usage?
> [...]
> > It would appear to be
> >not so much peculiar-UK as peculiar-KE.
>
> You do yourself an injustice. It sounds a bit old-fashioned, I agree,
> and is possibly brought on by reading too much Jane Austen (if that's
> not an oxymoron) but I've heard it, and used it myself on occasion.
I actually heard a 'usedn't' emanating from my MD at work the other day:
'I usedn't to worry about fish bones. . . .' It must be unusual in my
experience because I was struck by his pronunciation of it: /'jus@nt/
(YOU-ss'nt). I would say Tim's speech is generally just below RP.
Does anyone here use 'usedn't'?
Brian J Goggin
On Sun, 09 Feb 1997 17:51:58 GMT, la...@tcp.co.uk (Markus Laker)
wrote:
[...]
>I actually heard a 'usedn't' emanating from my MD at work the other day:
>'I usedn't to worry about fish bones. . . .' It must be unusual in my
>experience because I was struck by his pronunciation of it: /'jus@nt/
>(YOU-ss'nt). I would say Tim's speech is generally just below RP.
>
>Does anyone here use 'usedn't'?
Both the usage and the pronunciation sound OK to me. Perhaps Tim is
Irish?
bjg
Philip Eden
la...@tcp.co.uk (Markus Laker) wrote:
>I actually heard a 'usedn't' emanating from my MD at work the other day:
>'I usedn't to worry about fish bones. . . .' It must be unusual in my
>experience because I was struck by his pronunciation of it: /'jus@nt/
>(YOU-ss'nt). I would say Tim's speech is generally just below RP.
>
>Does anyone here use 'usedn't'?
>
My (paternal) grannie (north Hampshire country girl, 1885-1967) used to
use it regularly - I can almost hear here saying it now - but my
father usedn't. I don't normally utter it unless I want to sound, erm,
idiosyncratic.
Philip
(p-ed and m-ed)