"Anyway" has to refer to something. In this case the most likely reason is "I didn't want to go anyway."
"Tom invited me to his party, but I didn't want to go. Anyway, I couldn't have gone because I was ill."
Unless a person is going to be intransigent and say, "Yes, Tom asked me, and I wanted to go, and I was feeling well, and looking forward to a night out, but I still couldn't go anyway," I think it's fair to say that 'anyway' signifies something - despite the fact that he won't tell you what it is.
Hi, Raymott.
It was over midnight and I, after comtemplating on the question I raised, forgot to clarify that I read and agreed with what you said about
anyway. I should've have replaced
any with
there. This is a mistake which happened due to my neglect.
When I wrote my question, my emphasis lay on the difference between
couldn't go and
couldn't have gone. I thought, when it comes to the sense that the writer wants to state the fact he didn' go to the party, these two sentences express meanings that are "more or less the same".
Then I went down further and tried to think of situations where only one of the two structures is suitable. It occured to me the
could have done structure is sometimes used to talk about the possibility of a past event. So I hazarded a guess that when talking about the possibility of a event, or speaking against the a previously laid, only the
could have done structure is suitable? Perhaps this only works when it's a conversation about a third person?
For example:
A: Dude, everyone's saying you chick went to Tom's notoriously mad party last night. You'd better watch it.
B: S
he couldn't have gone there because she was ill and her mother was with her in a hospital.
And both sturctures are acceptable when the speaker only wants to give a fact.
A: Dude, did your girlfriend go to Tom'snotoriously mad party last night?
B: Tom invited her and she
couldn't go there/couldn't have gone there because she was ill.
