[Grammar] Having

[Ninnemouse]

Dear all

I was trying to find out what is grammatically wrong with this sentence, but could not come up with an explanation:

'Having a more thorough look at the documentation, we realise that....etc'

Is it wrong? And if so how would you rephrase it?

Another question: does anyone know if you enrol on/to/in a course?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Ninnemouse

 

[heyt]

Hi,

I'm not a teacher.

'Having a more thorough look at the documentation, we realise that....etc'

Did it happen in the past?
Then I would say 'we realised...'

Is it something in general?
Then I would say 'we can realise...'

As I've learnt we say 'enrol in a course'.

heyt :shock:

 

[Ninnemouse]

Thank you very much for your kind reply. I was also opting for 'enrol in a course'

Ninnemouse

 

[Barb_D]

I have only seen "enroll" with two Ls, but I did see that "enrol" with one L was listed in the dictionary as a variant spelling.

I think I would write "Having HAD a more thorough look... "

 

[crazYgeeK]

Hi, I don't understand what's wrong with "Having a more thorough look..", is it a command? Can it be "Have a more thorough look.." ?
Could you, Barb_D, please explain more about your sentence "Having HAD a more thorough look..", what is its grammatical structure?
Thank you so much !

 

[Jaskin]

hi,
please note I'm not a teacher nor a native speaker;

[...] what is its grammatical structure?

I'm not Barb but I hope she doesn't mind.

https://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ask-teacher/82087-having.html#post376930

I don't know why but the "a more through" sounds a bit odd,
I'd rephrase it to :

all the way through
through and through
scrutinous

Anyway the expression is to have a look at [something] so: having + had(past participle of have )
btw..

to enrol on a course (British English)
to enroll in a course (American English)

Cheers

 

[Barb_D]

Thank you. I would have never been able to recall that thread.

 

[euncu]

What about the usage of "have" with "to" like an infinitive? Would someone like to elaborate it?
An example;
I'm very proud to have served this country.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Barb_D]

I'm happy to meet you. (We are meeting right now.)
I was happy to have met you. (We met in the past.)

I'm proud to serve my country. (I am in uniform right now.)
I'm proud to have served my country. (I am no longer in the service.)

She hopes to go to the beach. (Her plan now.)
She had hoped to have gone to the beach. (Her plan then.)

If you look at the pairings of where you would normally use the "normal" in infinitive in the present, you can see how the perfect works with it for the past.

 

[euncu]

Thank you very much for your explanation.

I'd like to ask one last thing about it, especially about your last example. Is there such a thing as backshifting for the past perfect in this case? I mean, something like that;

1)She hopes to go to the beach. (Her plan now.)
2)She hoped to have gone to the beach. (Her plan then.)
3)She had hoped to had gone to the beach. (Her plan before any past event.)(?)

 

[Barb_D]

Interesting. Logic tells you it should work that way. But it doesn't. You need "to have gone."

 

[Heterological]

1)She hopes to go to the beach. (Her plan now.)

Correct.

2)She hoped to have gone to the beach. (Her plan then.)

Incorrect. In the past, she had a plan = She hoped to go to the beach.

3)She had hoped to had gone to the beach. (Her plan before any past event.)(?)

Incorrect. Before it started to rain, she had hoped to go to the beach. (Now she is not going to the beach.)

The only reason to change the tense of the "go to the beach" part is if her hope is for the action to have been completed by a specific time. As we generally see going to the beach as a fun process and not a necessary task to complete, this would be awkward with this example. Let's try a different one.

She hopes to lose ten pounds by summer. (It is not yet summer; she wants to lose ten pounds before then.)
She hoped to lose ten pounds by summer. (I imagine this would be the "storytelling" version of the above sentence; in the narrative, it is not yet summer and she is still hoping, but we usually tell stories in the past tense.)
She had hoped to lose ten pounds by summer. (The implication here is that it is now summer, and she failed to lose ten pounds.)
She hoped to have lost/she had hoped to lose ten pounds by now. (In this case it's very clear that her hoped-for deadline for losing the weight has come and gone, and she has not met it.)

 

[euncu]

Heterological, thank you very much for your elaborate reply.

 

[crazYgeeK]

Hi Heterological, How do you think if I have the following context:
1. It's now autumn
2. The story : "She lost ten pounds at the end of last summer. She had hoped to lose ten pounds by that summer." (It means she didn't failed to lose ten pounds)
As you have written, "It's now summer" and "she failed to lose ten pounds", what goes wrong here ?
Please give me your ideas to my thoughts.
Let's discuss more deeply the problems of tenses using.
Thank you very much !

 

[Raymott]

Dear all

I was trying to find out what is grammatically wrong with this sentence, but could not come up with an explanation:

'Having a more thorough look at the documentation, we realise that....etc'

Is it wrong? And if so how would you rephrase it?

Another question: does anyone know if you enrol on/to/in a course?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Ninnemouse

Back to the topic, I can see a few problems with your sentence.

Both clauses are in the present tense, but they can't be happening simultaneously because you have to i) look at the documentation, then ii) realise something.
This can fixed by putting the first clause in the past, as Barb did: "Having had a more thorough look, we realise ..."

If you change "look at" to "understanding of", you can put both clauses in the present tense.
'Having a more thorough understanding of the documentation, we now realise that....etc'. You can do this because there's no reason you can't both understand the documentation better and realise something at the same time.

 

[philo2009]

I must agree with Heterological and disagree with Barb D here: a sentence such as

!I hoped to have gone to the beach.

is semantically absurd, since it leaves unanswered the implicit question 'to have gone there before what?'

I hoped to go to the beach.

is the only sensible version.

On the other hand, in

I hoped to have (already) gone to the beach by the time she came back.

, the perfective infinitive phrase is appropriate, locating the act of going to the beach in a time frame prior to that denoted by the subsequent subordinate clause.

 

[Barb_D]

I believe my sentence was "I had hoped to have gone..."

The past perfect makes the present perfect work. (Right context of course. The rain ruined my plans, I had unexpected guests, etc.)

 

[philo2009]

I believe my sentence was "I had hoped to have gone..."

The past perfect makes the present perfect work. (Right context of course. The rain ruined my plans, I had unexpected guests, etc.)

Sorry, but it makes no difference which past tense (preterite or past perfect) you use in the main clause: the issue is the relative anteriority of the event denoted by the perfective infinitive (N.B. not a present perfect!) to some other event, in whose absence, as here, the entire utterance becomes nonsensical!

To put it more simply, it makes no more sense to say simply

!I had hoped to have gone to the beach.

than it would to convert the infinitive phrase into the corresponding subordinate clause and say

!I had hoped that I would have gone to the beach.

(both implicitly posing the unanswerable question 'by when?/before what?')

Reversing the process, on the other hand, and starting from the sensible complex sentence

I had hoped that I would go to the beach.

we derive the equally sensible simple sentence equivalent

I had hoped to go to the beach.

 

[Raymott]

To put it more simply, it makes no more sense to say simply

!I had hoped to have gone to the beach.

than it would to convert the infinitive phrase into the corresponding subordinate clause and say

!I had hoped that I would have gone to the beach.

(both implicitly posing the unanswerable question 'by when? before what?')

You're right of course. But these clauses aren't nonsensical per se. And the questions are not necessarily unanswerable.
Let's say I'm dying. I say, "Some time ago, I had hoped to have seen Paris before I died."

"I've left Susan. I had hoped that she would have stood by me if I'd lost the election. But now I see that she wouldn't have." (Note, I didn't lose the election, and therefore Susan did not fail to stand by me. But before we split up, and after the election, I had hoped that she would have stood by me had I lost.)

I admit there's little call for sentences like this.

 

[Heterological]

Hi Heterological, How do you think if I have the following context:
1. It's now autumn
2. The story : "She lost ten pounds at the end of last summer. She had hoped to lose ten pounds by that summer." (It means she didn't failed to lose ten pounds)
As you have written, "It's now summer" and "she failed to lose ten pounds", what goes wrong here ?
Please give me your ideas to my thoughts.
Let's discuss more deeply the problems of tenses using.
Thank you very much !

I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean:
-her plan was to lose ten pounds before summer
-she didn't lose ten pounds before summer, but she did lose ten pounds during the summer?

"She had hoped to lose ten pounds by now" implies, but does not state explicitly, that she did not lose the weight. If the sentence stood alone, most people would think she did not lose the weight. However, you could follow the sentence with "...and she succeeded!" or "...but she exceeded her goal and lost fifteen pounds!" and it would be grammatically correct.