had to be = had got to be ?

[novar]

Do both sentences have the same tense? Are both sentences correct?
The battery had to be recharged. = The battery had got to be recharged. ?

And how about the same with "must":
The battery must to be recharged.
Same tense as above?

Thanks for your help.

 

[emsr2d2]

Do both sentences have the same tense? Are both sentences correct?
The battery had to be recharged. :tick:
The battery had got to be recharged. :cross: This is ungrammatical.

And how about the same sentence with "must"?
The battery must to be recharged. :cross: This is ungrammatical. Don't use "to" after "must".
Is it in the same tense as [strike]above[/strike] the other two?

Thanks for your help.

See above.

The battery had to be recharged. (Simple past of "have to")
The battery must be recharged. (Simple present)

 

[Rover_KE]

sca1een, please read this extract from the forum's Posting Guidelines:

You are welcome to answer questions posted in the Ask a Teacher forum as long as your suggestions, help, and advice reflect a good understanding of the English language. If you are not a teacher, you will need to state that clearly in your post. Please note, all posts are moderated by our in-house language experts, so make sure your suggestions, help, and advice provide the kind of information an international language teacher would offer. If not, and your posts do not contribute to the topic in a positive way, they will be subject to deletion.

 

[novar]

@emsr2d2

Thanks to google books I found the following sentences in the English literature, for
the phrase "had got to be"
(http://tinyurl.com/gwyqpd6)

Hits by google-books:
but it had got to be stopped.
Somehow it had got to be managed.
Bank Rate had got to be raised.
had got to be done
they had got to be shown round

Your are telling me that my sentence:

The battery had got to be recharged.

is incorrect.

O.k. But given the google hits I simply don't understand that.
Why is that?

 

[Tdol]

Had got to be is an incomplete search- this could be followed by a number of things.

 

[novar]

Hi.
I assume these short sentences are correct:
Bank Rate had got to be raised.
It had got to be done.
It had got to be stopped.

And if this is the case, I can't understand why:

"The battery had got to be recharged." is false.

 

[Tdol]

It's not grammatically incorrect, but sometimes things boil down to patterns of usage- we say things because all or most of the other speakers in the speech community say something. I don't see any legal or moral obligation to recharge a battery, which is why I wouldn't use it, but others may just see it as sounding wrong, which would make it a case of collocation, which follows no logic other than following the majority. Sometimes the question why doesn't have an answer, but that doesn't necessarily negate things. I say on the left because my speech community does. There is no logical reason why people say in the left doesn't work- it doesn't work because we don't say it. That may not sound like a satisfactory answer to a why question, but it is a real answer in many cases.

 

[emsr2d2]

Put simply, for me, we just don't use "have got to" meaning "must" in any tense except the present tense.

I have to go to school today. :tick:
I have got to go to school today. :tick:

I had to go to school yesterday. :tick:
I had got to go to school yesterday. :cross:

I have had to go school every day for twelve years. :tick:
I have had got to to school every day for twelve years. :cross:


The battery has to be charged. :tick:
The battery has got to be charged. :tick:

The battery had to be charged. :tick:
The battery had got to be charged. :cross: