Some tense question

Status
Not open for further replies.

vkhu

Member
Joined
Nov 25, 2011
Member Type
Student or Learner
Native Language
Vietnamese
Home Country
Vietnam
Current Location
Vietnam
He said he hadn't cleaned the house
-> He denied cleaning the house

Isn't this suppose to be "he denied having clean the house"?
 

Raymott

VIP Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2008
Member Type
Academic
Native Language
English
Home Country
Australia
Current Location
Australia
He said he hadn't cleaned the house
-> He denied cleaning the house

Isn't this supposed to be "he denied having cleaned the house"?
Not necessarily. It depends upon the purpose of changing once sentence into another.

Was it to you who I said, "It's impossible to tell if your answer is right without knowing the question?" If not, I'm saying it now.
Without some sort of guidelines about why you want to change the sentence, there's no basis for saying that the second sentence "is supposed" to be anything.
 

vkhu

Member
Joined
Nov 25, 2011
Member Type
Student or Learner
Native Language
Vietnamese
Home Country
Vietnam
Current Location
Vietnam
Not necessarily. It depends upon the purpose of changing once sentence into another.

Was it to you who I said, "It's impossible to tell if your answer is right without knowing the question?" If not, I'm saying it now.
Without some sort of guidelines about why you want to change the sentence, there's no basis for saying that the second sentence "is supposed" to be anything.

Sorry about that. I was told to rewrite the sentence using the word cleaning. I can only think of denied cleaning but I don't get why it must be denied cleaning and not denied having cleaned.
 

Raymott

VIP Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2008
Member Type
Academic
Native Language
English
Home Country
Australia
Current Location
Australia
Sorry about that. I was told to rewrite the sentence using the word cleaning. I can only think of denied cleaning but I don't get why it must be denied cleaning and not denied having cleaned.
So, you are saying that you think, "He denied cleaning the house" is ungrammatical? It isn't.

It must be "denied cleaning" and not "denied having cleaned" because "denied having cleaned" is an illegitimate answer to the task you were given - since it doesn't contain "cleaning".
 

Barb_D

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Mar 12, 2007
Member Type
Other
Native Language
American English
Home Country
United States
Current Location
United States
He said that if there was any cleaning of the house done, it wasn't by him!

;-)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top