123Amigo
Member
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2011
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- German
- Home Country
- Germany
- Current Location
- Germany
Good evening,
I am currently working on my grammar skills, especially the modals. I finished an exercise a couple of minutes ago, but now I am confused.
The grammar within the same book told me that the negative form of can or could is used to express certainty.
They also say that could is the past form of can.
The example is:
It's unlikely she was enjoying herself very much.
The task is to form a the rest of a given modal sentence:
She can't have been enjoying herself very much.
This is the answer given in the correction.
Why do they use can't? I would suggest to use couldn't as we are dealing with a past tense. The tense in the example is past progressive not present progressive?
I hope you can give me a more useful explanation.
Kind regards and thank you very much!
I am currently working on my grammar skills, especially the modals. I finished an exercise a couple of minutes ago, but now I am confused.
The grammar within the same book told me that the negative form of can or could is used to express certainty.
They also say that could is the past form of can.
The example is:
It's unlikely she was enjoying herself very much.
The task is to form a the rest of a given modal sentence:
She can't have been enjoying herself very much.
This is the answer given in the correction.
Why do they use can't? I would suggest to use couldn't as we are dealing with a past tense. The tense in the example is past progressive not present progressive?
I hope you can give me a more useful explanation.
Kind regards and thank you very much!
