Holy verb string, Batman!

[Barb_D]

Yesterday, I said I was having a working lunch off site and would go home afterwards to take my 2 pm conference call.
But our lunch meeting ran long. I need 45 minutes to get home. By 1:30, I knew I'd have to go back to my office for the 2 pm call instead of trying to get home.

My coworker said "I thought you were going home for the afternoon."
I said "I meant to, but I would have had to have left at 1:15 and we were still talking at 1:30."

And then, language geek that I am, I wondered how many verbs that was in a row. And then I wondered if I could have said it in fewer words.

Could you?

 

[5jj]

I'd have said "I would have had to leave". You wouldn't have been obliged to have left at 1.15; you would have been obliged to leave at 1.15. Of course, if you are suggesting that a pre-1.15 departure was necessary, then the words you used are appropriate, if rather roundabout.

It's a bit like the "I would have liked to have been there" that some of us say, when either "I would like to have been there" or "I would have liked to be there" is what we probably mean.

 

[Tdol]

How about:

It would have meant leaving

 

[Roman55]

I am not a teacher.

Why not simply, "...I needed to leave…"?

 

[BobK]

David Crystal, to whom I assign the status of demi-god, has blogged about this here.

(You could always get a mobile )

b

 

[Raymott]

I am not a teacher.

Why not simply, "...I needed to leave…"?

I don't think that works for "I would have needed to leave ..."
I think we're dealing with an implied conditional, "If I was/were to have gone home [counterfactual], I would have needed to leave/have left ...". "To be able to go home, I would have needed to leave ..." I think it's also true that "she would have needed to have left by 1.15", which has a slightly different meaning, but is still true.
The reasoning is that if she had to leave by 1.15 to do something, then she would have had to have left by 1.15 to have done it.
"I would have had to leave by 1.15 to be able to go home."
"I would have had to have left by 1.15 to have been able to go home."

From what I can deduce from Crystal's passage (as per Bob's post), the double perfective is "not necessary" here, but also not wrong.

 

[Barb_D]

David Crystal, to whom I assign the status of demi-god, has blogged about this here.

Great resource. Thanks for the link. I may have to book mark him!

(You could always get a mobile )
b

Our company has a VERY strict no-multitasking policy about driving. When you drive, you drive. You don't participate on calls (and you certainly don't try to look at the screen that's showing the material we're reviewing).

If you are even within a 30-mile radius of Wilmington, Delaware, and see people in parking lots on conference calls, they probably work for my company. I like it, actually. If someone sees you with your mouth moving in the car, you better have been singing along to the radio!

 

[BobK]

:up: It's not just a company thing over here; it's the law. Drivers have to stop (safely), and - strictly - stop the engine too, before using a hand-held phone. (Ridiculously, hands-free mobiles seem to be exempt. [I don't know if that's a legal exemption, but drivers and phone suppliers behave as if it were. :-( ]

b

 

[emsr2d2]

It always strikes me that if they're going to ban talking on a hands-free phone, then they will also have to ban having a conversation with your passenger(s) while you're driving.

 

[SoothingDave]

With the newer cars, you can talk to your car and it will make the calls for you on your phone. No buttons to press (except for the one on the steering wheel to tell it "listen to my command.")

 

[Barb_D]

Delaware requires no hand-held phones too. But with my company, it's not just holding the phone, it's anything.

Actually, ems, there have been studies on this.
Two people walk across a campus having a conversation. They are able to recall much more of what they saw -they were far more aware of their surroundings than when people walked the same route but having a conversation on their mobile phone. They even failed to notice things like a man in a gorilla suit and a person juggling.

Also, think about how it does with someone in the car with you - they see you have to merge or that there is heavy traffic and the conversation wanes. They are not going "Are you still there? Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?" I remember once I was on the phone with my mother when out of no where, it started snowing crazy hard. I needed to hang up RIGHT THEN to concentrate (we have tiny windy roads here) and I tried to tell my mom I had to go. She kept on. "Are you okay" "Yes Mom, but I have hang up NOW." "Is something wrong? What's going on? Are you safe?" "Mom, I have to go NOW. It's snowing like crazy" "Now I"m worried... Call me when you get home." - A person in the car would have just shut up.

The level of focus you have to give someone on the phone, without body language cues and without a good portion of the voice quailty, to communicate is much higher than in person. So I do support it and have told my kids that no only will there be no texting in the car, there will be no use of the phone at all when they are driving, except as a talking GPS device.

Anyway, we have certainly digressed, but it was my thread, so I don't mind.

I think what I learend is that I could have said "I would have had to leave" instead of "I would have had to have left" but what I said wasn't wrong, and that what I said is actually quite common in verbal utterances. If I really had time to plan it, I would have said "Our lunch didn't end in time for me to get home."

 

[SoothingDave]

My company has a similar policy on phone use in vehicles. As do the job sites we visit.

We even discourage texting or email while walking. Especially in a manufacturing environment.

 

[emsr2d2]

Barb clearly has much more considerate passengers than I. I very much doubt many of mine would notice when I was about to "merge" etc and I've certainly never noticed any lull in the conversation based on the traffic situation. Having said that, I'm a very confident (possibly over-confident) driver - I am not fazed by bad weather or rubbish traffic or external influences. I have been known to chat, eat a sandwich, a packet of crisps, open a tightly shut bottle, and (I'm a little ashamed to say), text while driving on a motorway at over 70mph. I should point out that I haven't done all of those things at the same time!

Getting back to the point, I would have said either your original "I would have had to have left ..." or "I would have needed to leave ...". However, I would probably only write the latter.

 

[5jj]

In the days when I drove, any regular passenger of mine knew that when I said 'Shut up', I was not being rude (though I would be if they didn't). They knew that I had spotted something ahead that required 100% of my attention instantly, rather than the 95% it got if we were talking.

As a former driving instructor and driving instructor trainer, ems, I have to say that my occasionally flippant side will have nothing to do with motoring. I think that anybody caught trying to open a bottle, even if it is not tightly shut, or to text while driving, however slowly, should be banned instantly for a year, be compelled to attend five traffic accident scenes with an ambulance crew, and obliged to pass an extended driving test before being allowed to drive again.

 

[BobK]

It always strikes me that if they're going to ban talking on a hands-free phone, then they will also have to ban having a conversation with your passenger(s) while you're driving.

People in the car can see when the driver needs to concentrate; they know that if the driver meakes a fatal error they (the passenger) will be in the crash. And what about bad news?

b

PS I see Barb said this. Also I was inclined to Like Jed's contribution, but I didn't want to seem to be putting the boot in to Ems. I think drivers need to remember that a car can be a lethal weapon.