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MrPedantic
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271660
Sun, 24 Sep 06 01:35 PM
 Milky wrote: | Please, don't tell me this is about possession:
He has a child to feed, so he can't come until five. |
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<hand up>
1. I have a child.
— Possession, in a loose sense. The fact of "having a child" of course implies responsibility; but that implication isn't modal here.
2. A child to feed.
— Even without "have", you might infer a task, requirement, or obligation; that's what a post-modifying to-infinitive does.
Cf. (from Google)
3. There are always children to be fed, wounds to be cleaned, babies to be held and children to be hugged.
— The "task" is already present, without "have".
So we might say that the "task" resides in the to-infinitive; only the possession (i.e. "ownership") of the task resides in "have".
Thus:
4. I have + a child to feed.
= state of possession + thing possessed.
MrP
Joined on
Tue, Oct 12 2004
Veteran Member
12,592
...opella forensis / adducit febris...
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Anonymous,
3 yr 63 days ago
< Cf. (from Google)
3. There are always children to be fed, wounds to be cleaned, babies to be held and children to be hugged.
— The "task" is already present, without "have". >
Try that without "be" and the tense that suits. Why did you add it?
And:
the child is waiting to be fed.
to be = pending action
he is to be hanged at six.
to be continued
...
Onward...
Do the same with this one as you did above :
I have a letter to write.
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milky
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271697
Sun, 24 Sep 06 02:53 PM
3. There are always children to be fed, wounds to be cleaned, babies to be held and children to be hugged.
— The "task" is already present, without "have". >
Try that without "be" and the tense that suits. Why did you add it?
And:
the child is waiting to be fed.
to be = pending action
he is to be hanged at six.
to be continued
...
Onward...
Do the same with this one as you did above :
I have a letter to write.
Joined on
Thu, Jan 15 2004
Senior Member
3,149
Hume said that if we had perfect or complete descriptive knowledge of reality, we could not, by reasoning, derive a single valid "ought".
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MrPedantic
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271700
Sun, 24 Sep 06 03:04 PM
"There are always letters to write, emails to send, bills to pay, posts to answer..."
MrP
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MrPedantic
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271702
Sun, 24 Sep 06 03:06 PM
1. "I have to write a report." "No, you don't."
2. "I have a report to write." "No, you haven't."
(Which may seem mysterious to AmE speakers.)
MrP
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milky,
3 yr 63 days ago
I have a report to write. It's on my desk right next to the invisible ink.
![Stick out tongue [:P]](/emoticons/emotion-4.gif)
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milky
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271706
Sun, 24 Sep 06 03:26 PM
"I have a child to feed." "No, you haven't."
"I have a child to feed." "No, you don't."
"I have a child." "No, you haven't".
"I have a child." "No, you don't".
Which sounds odd to AE speakers?
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Anonymous,
1 yr 6 days ago
Are some people mis-reading Trollope? Quote:
Nonetheless, all of the grammarians cited in the previous paragraph feel that in certain cases there is indeed a semantic distinction. Poutsma (1904: 549) sees a "clear"
difference in meaning between I have much money to spend and I have to spend much money. When the two orders are found in the same quotation, Kruisinga (1931: 381) recognizes a semantic contrast, as does Jespersen (1940: 205), who cites the following example from Trollope:
15. The writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell (Trollope A208).
However, Jespersen glosses the lines wrongly, I believe, as follows: ‘the writer sits down to write not because he has something which he burns to tell, but because he feels it incumbent on him to be telling something’.
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THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF QUASIMODAL HAVE TO IN ENGLISH. By Laurel J. Brinton.
Anonymous,
1 yr 3 days ago
Folks, how would you read "Those are the letters I had to write", as modal or non-modal?
Also, it seems the sense of necessity is obvious here, right?
We only have ourselves to thank for not listening to her.
How about this? Any obligation/necessity/duty reading possible there?
She hasn't got anything to do today.
Does this simply mean "I own a pair of slippers"?
I've my slippers to put on.
Comments on this? Negation of necessity. Modal?
Many natives think they've nothing to learn fron non-natives.
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