past tense of "mustn't"

[philo2009]

Hi,
please can you tell me how to express meaning of "mustn't" (when it is only my opinion) in the past tense?

I mustn't do it today.
I ??????? do it yesterday.

I was not allowed or I was not supposed sounds to me as a someone else's order.

Thanks a lot.

Nevertheless these are the only acceptable options in contemporary English!
The form hadn't to technically expresses a past prohibition, but, as well as sounding archaic, it is likely to be ambiguous, misunderstood as a variant form of didn't have to.

 

[2006]

Nevertheless these are the only acceptable options in contemporary English!
The form hadn't to technically expresses a past prohibition, but, as well assounding archaic, it is likely to be ambiguous, misunderstood as a variant form of didn't have to.

(I have not followed this thread closely, so perhaps my comments are out of place.)

How about, 'I had to not do it yesterday.' [= 'I had (no choice but) to not do it yesterday.']

"had to not" expressses prohibition.

 

[corum]

I miss our Hungarian friend, who was banned, and also, many non-natives who contribute to the site, and this thread, write better English than many natives I know.

Hello Peter,

One of the subtleties the quoted text above carries and the reader has to be able to put his/her finger on if (s)he wants to get the intended meaning has much to do with one type of linguistic competence, namely, pragmatic competence. In other words, how the reader can bring into play nonlinguistic information.
You can be the best grammarian and still fail to get the message because you are not in the know of the arcane details involved.
If my pragmatic competence is anything to rely on, "I miss our Hungarian friend" means something along the lines of "Thank you svartnik, aka corum, for reading my previous post and expressing your favorable opinion by clicking the 'thank you' button. Anyway, it is good to see you here.”
Regarding the issue of grammatical competence, intuitions of sentence well-formedness and sentence structure, I seriously doubt that it is solely a matter of socio-cultural heritage.
I have been visiting the main English language forums for a fairly long period of time and I must confess to a genuine puzzlement as to why many of the teachers, self-professed academics -- they all speak fluently, I believe -- lack so much in competence in sentence structure. They have a natural tendency to identify grammatical structures correctly, but when it comes to explaining things, most of them are floored. If they are English teachers, the question rightfully arises: "What can a student learn from them?"

 

[Raymott]

If my pragmatic competence is anything to rely on, "I miss our Hungarian friend" means something along the lines of "Thank you svartnik, aka corum, for reading my previous post and expressing your favorable opinion by clicking the 'thank you' button. Anyway, it is good to see you here.”

If this is true, I now understand why svartnik was banned. I'd prefer to have him back. He was much more simpatico.

 

[Abstract Idea]

If my pragmatic competence is anything to rely on, "I miss our Hungarian friend" means something along the lines of "Thank you svartnik, aka corum, for reading my previous post and expressing your favorable opinion by clicking the 'thank you' button. Anyway, it is good to see you here.”
Regarding the issue of grammatical competence, intuitions of sentence well-formedness and sentence structure, I seriously doubt that it is solely a matter of socio-cultural heritage.

I guess I understood it in the same line. Although I confess I had a little doubt whether that was what konungursvia wanted to mean. Let us say I suspected he wanted to say so.

It is interesting to study pragmatics and practice it here, I wish I had seen linguistics was so marvelous in my high school times.

PS I still do not understand the banning politics of the site.

 

[philo2009]

(I have not followed this thread closely, so perhaps my comments are out of place.)

How about, 'I had to not do it yesterday.' [= 'I had (no choice but) to not do it yesterday.']

"had to not" expressses prohibition.

To be perfectly honest, the concept of an obligation NOT to do some particular thing (as opposed to an obligation not to do anything, i.e. to do nothing) strikes me as a little strange.

Perhaps this is, however, a philosophical rather than a strictly linguistic point.

 

[2006]

To be perfectly honest, the concept of an obligation NOT to do some particular thing (as opposed to an obligation not to do anything, i.e. to do nothing) strikes me as a little strange.
But why is that? Both ideas are real and distinctly different. And I'm not sure how philosophy enters the picture.
Perhaps this is, however, a philosophical rather than a strictly linguistic point.

But my reply is not necessarily meant to keep the thread going.

 

[Abstract Idea]

To be perfectly honest, the concept of an obligation NOT to do some particular thing (as opposed to an obligation not to do anything, i.e. to do nothing) strikes me as a little strange.

Perhaps this is, however, a philosophical rather than a strictly linguistic point.

At first it strikes me a little bit too. However, thinking further I guess the problem is overcome (at least in the present tense):

I must reply to this thread. = I must not read it passively.
I must continue studying English this year. = I must not stop studying English this year.
You must not open this letter.

Converting to past:
I had to reply to that thread = I had not to read it passively (strange - maybe I couldn't read it passively?)
I had to continue studying English that year = I had not to stop studying English that year (strange again - better I couldn't stop studying English?)
You had not to open this letter? Here I find it better to use should.

What do you say?

 

[philo2009]

But why is that? Both ideas are real and distinctly different. And I'm not sure how philosophy enters the picture.

Why indeed? A very good question, and, as a grammarian rather than a philosopher, I'm not sure whether I can provide a satisfactory answer!

What I mean, however, by 'a philosophical rather than a strictly linguistic point' is that the problem with the solution that you propose strikes me as a conceptual one rather than one relating purely to sentence-structuring possibilities.

Allow me an example: it is perfectly possible to take the two structures [can V] and [(be) supposed to V] - both quite 'real and distinctly different' - and combine them to make a sentence such as

? I can be supposed to meet him at noon today.

There is nothing structurally wrong with the sentence at all, and yet - to my mind (you may, of course, disagree) - the above sentence, for all its structural flawlessness, is near-meaningless, a kind of semantic absurdity. Put another way, there simply does not seem to be any interpretive mechanism that would allow as meaningful the combination of these two structures in this way.

In very much the same way, I have trouble with your suggestion of

? I had to not do it.

Have I made myself a little clearer?

 

[2006]

What I mean, however, by 'a philosophical rather than a strictly linguistic point' is that the problem with the solution that you propose strikes me as a conceptual one rather than one relating purely to sentence-structuring possibilities. But I disagree.

Allow me an example: it is perfectly possible to take the two structures [can V] and [(be) supposed to V] - both quite 'real and distinctly different' - and combine them to make a sentence such as

? I can be supposed to meet him at noon today.
Sorry, I don't see what this has to do with my earlier posts.
In very much the same way, I have trouble with your suggestion of

? I had to not do it. Now this has to do with my earlier posts, so I'll try to explain.
I believe some would say 'I had not to do it.', but I'll try to explain why 'I had to not do it.' makes more sense to me grammatically and semantically.

I (must)(have to) do it. (same meaning)
I (must not)(have to not) do it. (same meaning)

past tense: 'I ?? must ??? not?? do it.' 'I had to not do it.'

Since we can't say something like 'I (had to) mustn't do it yesterday.', I think that 'I had to not do it yesterday.' is the correct choice. It's grammatically and semantically correct.

The following, from a previous thread (and I don't know if you followed that thread), is related to the above and may help you better understand where I am coming from.


I did it not to become poor, but to follow my dream. (I did it to follow my dream, but I became poor as a result.)

I did it to not become poor. (I did it to prevent myself from becoming poor.)

So the 'not to' and 'to not' grammars are both legitimate but have different meanings.

2006

 

[yuriya]

Thank you for your answer.

Yes, I know that, but "don't have to" is not "mustn't" in meaning. So if I want to express "mustn't" in the past tense I can't say "didn't have to".

Regards.

Hi,
please can you tell me how to express meaning of "mustn't" (when it is only my opinion) in the past tense?

I mustn't do it today.
I ??????? do it yesterday.

I was not allowed or I was not supposed sounds to me as a someone else's order.

Thanks a lot.

I think you seem to think of must in terms of command rather than of necessity. If I'm right, then you'd want to say,

I shouldn't do it today.
I shouldn't have done it yesterday.

Hope it helped.

 

[philo2009]

2006

Indeed, given the existence of 'must not do it', it is difficult to dispute the logic of 'have to not do it'. However, the English language is not always entirely logical/predictable and I think that many speakers would share my reservations about it.

Once again, however, let me emphasize that I do not consider your suggestion to be grammatically unsound or impossible, simply to be a combination that many speakers would not - whether through convention or on other grounds - find acceptable.

As you and I have now stated our respective positions, the only productive way to continue this matter would, I think, be to conduct a poll of native speakers. It may, perhaps, simply turn out to be a matter of BrE vs. AmE variation.

 

[cubezero3]

I happened to come across the following sentence the other day and wondered if it could be seen as a proof that the use of must in past tenses is at least supported by the editors of the Guardian.

At Carlisle crown court, Judge Barbara Forrester told Tabram, of Humshaugh, Northumberland, that she must pay £1,000 costs.

Woman, 68, who put cannabis in casseroles guilty of growing drug | UK news | The Guardian

 

[philo2009]

I happened to come across the following sentence the other day and wondered if it could be seen as a proof that the use of must in past tenses is at least supported by the editors of the Guardian.



Woman, 68, who put cannabis in casseroles guilty of growing drug | UK news | The Guardian

The word 'must' originates as a past tense (cognate with ModGer musste, 'had to') which gradually over time assumed the functionality of a present tense and lost its past meaning. It reveals its origin now only in reported speech (and that primarily only in BrE), so that, although we may no longer say

*I must do it yesterday.

(for 'I had to do it yesterday')

we can still say

I knew that I must see him before the end of the day.

(for 'I knew that I had to...')

 

[Abstract Idea]

To be perfectly honest, the concept of an obligation NOT to do some particular thing (as opposed to an obligation not to do anything, i.e. to do nothing) strikes me as a little strange.

Perhaps this is, however, a philosophical rather than a strictly linguistic point.

At first it strikes me a little bit too. However, thinking further I guess the problem is overcome (at least in the present tense):

I must reply to this thread. = I must not read it passively.
I must continue studying English this year. = I must not stop studying English this year.
You must not open this letter.

Converting to past:
I had to reply to that thread = I had not to read it passively (strange - maybe I couldn't read it passively?)
I had to continue studying English that year = I had not to stop studying English that year (strange again - better I couldn't/shouldn't stop studying English?)
You had not to open this letter? - Here I find it better to use should.

What do you say?

 

[philo2009]

Indeed, no problem with any of your examples, since [(have) not to V] (for all its old-fashionedness) is a standard structure expressing prohibition.

My query related to 2006's suggested structure ?[(have) to not V] as a valid (i.e. potentially less ambiguous) alternative to the above. The questions relating to it are specifically:

(1) Does the structure actually exist?

As I endeavored to demonstrate in a previous post, the mere syntactic possibility of combining two simple modal structures into a modal 'superstructure' does not guarantee the existence of the latter as a meaningful, generally accepted expression.


(2) Even if it does exist, does it actually mean that which 2006 suggests that it ought to mean?

Once again, the English language is not entirely predictable on this point where modal expressions are concerned. The standard prohibitionary structure

I haven't to go there.

might well appear to mean

I don't have to go there.

(on the basis that we might reasonably expect semantic equivalence between haven't on the one hand and don't have on the other)

- and is, for this very reason, often misunderstood by learners - but actually does mean

I must not (or, more traditionally, may not*) go there.


Allow me to reiterate that none of the above amounts to an absolute rejection on my part of the construction [(have) to not V]. All that I can assert with confidence is that it does not exist in standard BrE. It may well, however, be accepted, or in the process of becoming so, in, for example, informal AmE.

It was for this reason that I proposed a poll of natives as the most productive way forward in this debate.

*N.B. It is salutary to note that, in former times, even 'must not' in standard, formal usage was not prohibitionary but merely negatively obligational (i.e. it meant '(be) not obliged to' rather than '(be) not allowed to'), with 'may not' as the only standard structure expressing actual prohibition.

Compare Modern German

Ich muss nicht nach Berlin fahren.

(= I do not have to go to Berlin)

with genuinely proscriptive

Ich darf nicht nach Berlin fahren.

(=I may not/must not go to Berlin).