taog

I am not sure if this is in the correct forum or not. I haven't really posted since the old boards, and I didn't see any questions forum or anything like that. I think there used to be one, didn't there?

Anyway, if this is posted in the wrong forum, I'm sorry, and can you please move it?


Now that I have that out of the way, here's my question.


Ok, I was talking to a friend about mp3's and bands and stuff like that. The end of the conversation ended with him talking about how Kid n' Play for sure smoked a lot of weed. He ended the conversation with, 'play had to of'.

Now, should this be 'play had to have', or 'play had to of'?

I think it's 'Play had to have' for some reason, but I can't really think of a good reason why. Of just sounds wrong, but people would normally just say 'Play had to've', out loud instead of pronouncing the whole 'have'.

Then i started thinking about other things in this situation like, 'Play would have had to have had to smoke weed to be like he was'. Would that be grammatically correct?

I am kind of confusing the hell out of myself right now.

I NEED HELP FROM AN ENGLISH BUFF OR SOMETHING!!!!

What do you guys think of this?

bah


EDIT

I just read this:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ent...ank/17704.html

And the end of the rant says:

"He would have had to have had, wouldn't he have?"

That makes my brain hurt

Rlyss

Is 'play had to have' a complete sentence? Do you mean 'They' or is 'Play' someone's name?

Either way, you never say 'would of'. It should be 'would have'. "I would've gone home" actually means "I would have gone home", not "I would of."

So a) it's "Would have", "should have", "must have", "had to have", etc.

And "He would have had to have had to smoke weed to be like he was" is too long. It should be "He would have had to smoke weed to be like he was."

<i>He (would have) (had to) smoke weed [...].</i>

That's what the sentence breaks down to. (Would have) indicates the action he took ('smoke') and (had to) indicates the tense (past tense). When you break down the phrase it the parts become (would have) and (had to), not (would have had to). If you think of them as two different parts then you'll see that you don't need to add another 'had to' at the end.

So b) "He would have had to smoke weed to be like he was."

Hope that helps

Cynthetiq

remember that time you were trying to rember but couldn't remember, remember?

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taog

Ok, I'll explain a little further.

Play is the name of the guy. The conversation makes sense, but the 'smoke weed' part was just left off. It's just regular every day conversation.

'Play had to have', was basically saying, 'Play had to have smoked weed'.


By me saying, 'Play would have had to have had to smoke weed' is just me asking if that makes sense. It kind of seems to make sense, grammatically, kind of, but not really.

It's kind of a bad example, but it's what made me start thinking about all this crapola.

If you look at the site i posted, it says:

"In would have had to have had the final "had" can only be a main verb. It becomes clearly ungrammatical when it's used as a further auxiliary: one of the hits was "would have had to have had to invest". I don't know how that got past a reader, but the bare presence of the word "invest" means they're probably used to reading and writing inflated gibberish. There are four examples altogether of would have had to have had to V, and one of would of had to of had to of V."

It kind of confuses me, but i guess it's saying that my example should be.

"Play would have had to have smoked weed" for it to make sense, grammatically, right?

or, yes, 'Play would have had to smoke weed' works too. I just don't like the sound of it.

Also, I think we should start putting 'to've' into our daily writings and accept it as regular grammar, since we already use it like i'ts our jobs.

Anyway, I think this kind of makes a bit more sense to me. I'll ask the hot english major at my work what she thinks about it all.

Rlyss

I think it should be "Play would have had to smoke weed". There shouldn't be the 'have smoked' part. I think it does make sense to add that there, but I think it's just as correct and more efficient to say 'Would have had to smoke weed.'

When you say 'would have had' it points out some sort of action and the tense, that is, past tense (had is past tense of 'to have'). So by adding the other 'have smoked' you're saying that it happened in the past, even though you've already said it's happened in the past. The existence of 'would have had' means you don't need to use 'have smoked'.

KnifeMissile

First of all, I think we all understand that it should have been "have" and not "of."

Secondly, no one but a pot-head would think that "Play had to have," was a sentence, even in colloquial English. Had to have what?!

Thirdly, I don't think the sentences "Play would have had to have smoked weed," and "Play would have had to smoke weed," mean the same thing, exactly.

"Play would have had to have smoked weed," means that, in the hypothetical past, there was reason to believe that Play had smoked weed but... I will say more about this, later.

"Play would have had to smoke weed," simply means that, in the hypothetical past, Play smoked weed but... I will say more about this, later.

Fourthly, I still don't think the sentence makes any sense. The word "would," in this case, is used to determine a hypothetical past. "I would have done this," makes no more sense, as a sentence, than "If I were in town." If I were in town... then what?! I would have done this... but what?! Play would have had to smoke weed... but what?!

Lastly, you're probably better off asking your hot English major although I have a sneaking suspicion she will not have any insight into this. Furthermore, I suspect that she might not even be interested in the problem... Not all English students are fascinated by the subtleties of English grammar...

nash

I think "would've" became "would of" somewhere along the way, and now people think "would of" is correct if they haven't thought about it.

kulrblind

While I agree with KnifeMissle's points, I will also put forth that the English language is full of implied predicates / clauses, and they actually are accepted (not just lazily ignored).

Thus:
"Play would have had to have smoked weed (implied: to write that music)" basically means that, in order for the music to come out the way it did, it is posited that some weed-smokin' would be /was involved. The word "would", in this case, does not denote a choice by the subject, but rather refers to the condition of probability.

[/talkingoutofmyass]

I wish "would of" would die a quick death, along with pluralising using apostrophes (apostrophe's!) and the misspellings "congradulations" and "definately."

Supple Cow

"Play would have had to have" seems like it would be a complete sentence as long as the preceding sentence specified what the subject of the sentence was. But I'm not 100% certain about that one.

As for the other stuff, I think KnifeMissle was on the right track, but his explanation is still a little sketchy. I don't know the proper terms for this in English, but in French, there is a past tense (passe compose or imparfait) and another past tense that happens before the regular one (plus-que-parfait).

For instance:

If I want to say that something simply happened in the past, I would say (and I'll use your example)...

Play would have had to smoke pot.

BUT, if I wanted to say the same thing AND IT HAD TO HAPPEN BEFORE SOME OTHER SPECIFIED POINT IN THE PAST, it would be...

Play would have had to have smoked pot [...to do whatever it is that he did in the past].

Does that make more sense now?

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sapiens

What's wrong with eliminating the "have had to have" and just saying, "Play must have smoked weed."?

rsl12

"Play had to have" is a perfectly good sentence. You have the subject (Play) verb (had to), which is enough for a complete sentence ("Play had to", with the object being understood without mentioning it. It's just as complete as if you had said "John went in.").

"Have" can be used in two ways--have, meaning to own something ("Play had to have weed") and "have" being used to create a perfect past tense when combined with a past participle ("Play had to have smoked"). In your case, "have" is being used in the second sense: Play had to have smoked weed.

I think everyone can agree that if 'have' was being used in the first sense, "play had to have" is grammatically correct. It's just as complete as saying "John had to go." You can say "Play had to have" if what you mean is play had to have (it), or if you mean that Play had to have things in general.

I would argue that using 'have' in the second sense is equally correct. "Did John go to the store?" "Yes, he did." If "he did" is correct, when meaning he did (go), then "Play had to have" should be correct, meaning Play had to have (smoked).

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rsl12

small correction from the above--"Play" is the subject", "had" is the verb, "to have" is the beginning of an infinitive clause, and (smoked) is the understood past participle that is not being said.

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tehhappyboy

Gah, back evil past participles. (Must have is a definite, had to colloquially is less imperitive than must.)

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pig

This sounds like a question of slang vs. King's own. My take is that the original sentence would get you in trouble for English Comp. paper on the Influence of Drug Use on the Compositional Selection of Kid 'n Play. You're probably better with reformulating to "Play must have" or something like that. However, for a couple of guys on a couch talking about the old Kid 'n Play Kickstep, I wouldn't worry about it

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nothingx

Your friend is wrong, and here is why:

The word 'of' is a prepostition, which is "a function word that typically combines with a noun phrase to form a phrase which usually expresses a modification or predication." [1] You see, "of" needs to come before another phrase which modifies the preceding phrase. Your friend has made a "dangling prepostiion" [2] which is syntactically incorrect.

[1] http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=preposition
[2] http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/rprie...links/prep.htm

macmanmike6100

have

tiberry

holy crap!!! you guys are bored, huh?

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