| Are you saying that the structure in the football example is not "used to", but is "used" (or used not)? |
|
I'm saying that the structure is the whole thing, not just a word or two.
I | used / decided / promised | [(not) (to play football)].
It 'sounds wrong' because 'used' and 'to' have fused into the single
word-like element 'yoostoo' in the minds of many speakers, and the 'not' splits
it back into its components, so it feels like the 'yoostoo' is oddly
missing.
If you're concentrating on the question of whether the modality or the
residue is under the scope of the negation, then I'd have to say that
the structural diagram I showed above goes with the version where the
residue is negated.
To construe
I used not to play football as (containing) a negation of the modality, as in the more usual
I didn't use to play football,
it would be necessary to work out a different structural diagram.
I think you'd have to argue that its analog is something like
I haven't to play football, and that starts to get weird -- although somewhere in the back of my mind I vaguely remember reading the combination
I usen't to ....
Or, if you're determined to have the negation of the modality, you
could call it a one-of-a-kind pattern, appealing to the idea of 'idiom'.
On the other hand, conceptually, what's the difference if we talk about
what we were in the habit of not doing or not in the habit of
doing? It's six of one, half a dozen of the other.
CJ