Timeline for "should have taken seriously" [duplicate]
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 9, 2016 at 19:10 | history | closed |
Kinzle B Nathan Tuggy ruakh CommunityBot |
Duplicate of 'Should have' in a factual sense | |
| Feb 7, 2016 at 19:14 | answer | added | Mark Hubbard | timeline score: 0 | |
| Feb 6, 2016 at 5:57 | review | Close votes | |||
| Feb 6, 2016 at 6:56 | |||||
| Feb 6, 2016 at 5:40 | comment | added | Kinzle B | This may help you: ell.stackexchange.com/questions/30399/… and ell.stackexchange.com/questions/24938/… @bart-leby | |
| Feb 5, 2016 at 23:05 | comment | added | TimR | A subset of the consuetudinal: it was SOP to drink from the murky waters. | |
| Feb 5, 2016 at 19:55 | comment | added | StoneyB on hiatus | I'd avoid this: puzzling for Benjamin can be misunderstood as saying that Benjamin was puzzled. | |
| Feb 5, 2016 at 16:39 | comment | added | Schwale | What about changing the sentence as it's not really puzzling for Benjamin to have taken ...? | |
| Feb 5, 2016 at 16:37 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @StoneyB: oic. Yeah - it's the fact of there being an auxiliary verb (and that we don't inflect more than one verb in such "multiple-verb" constructions). I suggest this be classed as yet another nail in the subjunctive's coffin! :) | |
| Feb 5, 2016 at 16:36 | history | edited | Jasper |
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| Feb 5, 2016 at 15:50 | comment | added | StoneyB on hiatus | @FumbleFingers But the plainform there is an infinitive, elicited by use with an auxiliary: it would be exactly the same form if you found it interesting that he can say that or that he does say that. | |
| Feb 5, 2016 at 15:45 | comment | added | StoneyB on hiatus | I'd say it's mostly stylistic; but it does convey a minor sort of modality, just a hint of a concession that it was certainly possible for Benjamin not to have taken these authors seriously. | |
| Feb 5, 2016 at 15:44 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @StoneyB: It's interesting [that] you [should] say that. Suppose we switch to present tense and change the embedded subject to a pronoun where the verb form doesn't match the subjunctive / infinitive, giving It's interesting that he should say that. In that case, the presence of should obliges us to use the uninflected verb form (where without it, we'd have the normally-conjugated that he says that). So I think it's not just that OP could think of it as a subjunctive - it really is a subjunctive. | |
| Feb 5, 2016 at 15:36 | comment | added | bart-leby | Thank you for a reply. Is there some reason why the author chose this form? Is it only a matter of a style? | |
| Feb 5, 2016 at 15:24 | comment | added | StoneyB on hiatus | Should here does not have a counterfactual implication--you may understand it as the present-day English equivalent of a subjunctive in languages which have distinct inflections for that. It would mean exactly the same thing if the author had written It is not really puzzling that Benjamin took such authors seriously, or For Benjamin to have taken such authors seriously is not really puzzling. | |
| Feb 5, 2016 at 15:13 | history | asked | bart-leby | CC BY-SA 3.0 |