What I haven't done is admitted ...

[Nonverbis]

The textbook: Upstream proficiency by Virginia Evans and Jenny Dooley




Could you tell me why "admitted" is used here?

To my mynde come something like "admitting", "to admit". Could you speculate on this topic?

 

[Phaedrus]

Could you tell me why "admitted" is used here?

"What I haven't done is admitted this to the children" is a pseudo-cleft sentence related to "I haven't admitted this to the children."

 

[SoothingDave]

What bothers you about the word?

The very first definition of "admit" is:

confess to be true or to be the case, typically with reluctance:

 

[Glizdka]

Maybe it's just me, but I'd prefer "What I haven't done is admitting this to the children".

 

[emsr2d2]

Maybe it's just me, but I'd prefer "What I haven't done is admitting this to the children".

"Admit" is the right word there.

 

[emsr2d2]

To my mynde

Whilst that is a glorious example of Shakespearean or Middle English, I'm pretty sure you meant "mind".

 

[Glizdka]

"Admit" is the right word there.

Hmmm, admit is even better. I don't know why, but I just don't like admitted here.

 

[SoothingDave]

"Admitted" is fine for me as well.

 

[Tdol]

Fessed up

 

[probus]

I too prefer admit. Admitted is also acceptable but admitting seems both unnatural and ungramnatical to me.

 

[Nonverbis]

Frankly speaking, I can't understand the grammar in case of "admit" and "admitted".

As for "admitting" it is for me similar to this case:

Her greatest pleasure is reading.

So, the gerund is a part of a compound verbal predicate in this case. And I can't understand anything in this branch of discussion, frankly speaking. And I would like to see more explanations here. I mean not "I prefer", but "I prefer ..., because ...".

 

[Phaedrus]

Frankly speaking, I can't understand the grammar in case of "admit" and "admitted".

The sentence "I haven't admitted this to the children" states that the speaker hasn't done something, namely, admitted this to the children.

I haven't [verb phrase headed by a past participle]. I haven't [admitted this to the children].

What I haven't [done] = [admitted this to the children].

What I haven't done is admitted this to the children.

 

[Nonverbis]

It does not explain anything to me. If you mentioned that this is a case of ellipsis, this would explain everything. But in your case you just show the construction. It is all good, but unfortunately it adds nothing to the understanding of the phenomenon.

What I haven't done though is [that I haven't] admitted things to the children.

Could you tell me whether this is what you are trying to say?

 

[emsr2d2]

I still go with "admit". If you change the verb, I think it might be clearer. Let's use "go".

I've been to Greece.
What I've done is go to Greece.

I haven't been to Greece.
What I haven't done is go to Greece.

I definitely wouldn't use "been" in the second sentence in either example, despite that being part of the present perfect form that "admitted" is in the previous examples.

 

[Nonverbis]

I still go with "admit". If you change the verb, I think it might be clearer. Let's use "go".

But why is the infinitive bare in this case?

Usually the infinitive goes with "to".

Your duty was to inform me about it immediately.

Here we also have a construction:

to be + to inf

 

[Phaedrus]

It does not explain anything to me. If you mentioned that this is a case of ellipsis, this would explain everything. But in your case you just show the construction. It is all good, but unfortunately it adds nothing to the understanding of the phenomenon.

If you want to see ellipsis, you can think of it like this:

What I haven't done is [to have] admitted this to the children.

The construction that ems prefers can be viewed as just omitting "to":

What I haven't done is [to] admit this to the children.

Below is a link to a doctoral dissertation on pseudo-cleft sentences. Perhaps you will find this author to "[add something] to the understanding of the phenomenon."

https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/12988

 

[Glizdka]

My first instinct was to go with a gerund because I haven't done something. Admitting to the children is something I haven't done. It's what I haven't done.

But once emsr2d2 pointed out that a bare infinitive is correct here, it all made sense to me. I didn't recognize the pattern at first.

I retract what I've said in post #4.

 

[jutfrank]

You can understand it like this:

I haven't admitted things to the children. [This is the central thought in the speaker's mind]

What I haven't done is [I haven't] admitted things to the children. [This is the same thought prefaced with a cleft]

The subject and auxiliary I haven't are ellipted since they're already used in the cleft.