A great thing about being Facebook friends with linguists is that I get to benefit from their daily observations of English. Here's a recent observation from John Wells:
Something I've just heard on the telly about someone who nearly drowned: "If the fisherman hadn't've spotted him, he might not have survived."I keep hearing this grammatical construction in BrE, with extra "have" ('ve) as compared with the standard "...hadn't spotted...".But I have never come across any comment on, or discussion of, this usage.
In the comments, some people claim it's much used in the US, but it soon becomes clear that there's some confusion with a different construction than Wells was talking about. So, let's look at it.
I'm using the News on the Web corpus (because my usual go-to GloWbE corpus isn't co(-)operating in giving me the contractions). There I searched for "had n't have VERB" and got it with a range of verbs:
So, it's looking pretty British, but in Caroline McAfee's 'Characteristics of non-standard grammar in Scotland', she says "as in American English". (Bold = my emphasis, so it's clear which [more BrE] bits of the example we're talking about.)
In Scottish speech, as in American English, there is a sequence had – (ENCLITIC NEGATIVE PARTICLE) – have PAST PARTICIPLE. The identity of the second have, which appears as a weak or enclitic form, is problematic (as witness the writers who spell it of):
‘Ah wouldnae of came if Ah had of knew,’ he insisted (Helen W. Pryde, the First Book of the McFlannels, 1947: 24)
Adams (1948) suggested that it was a survival of English dialectal y- before past participles, reinterpreted as have via the latter’s weak form a. The occurrence of the form in Scotland and the USA is compatible with diffusion from Ulster. Fodor and Smith (1978) offer a purely synchronic analysis, seeing the first have as a modal and the second as the auxiliary of the perfect.
The British usage may have started in Scotland and now is more widespread. But what about that "as in American English"? Well, the historical picture in Google Ngrams gives us a different story from the contemporary NOW corpus. Here it is with had and been as the last verb in the search term:
Posts
comment catcher
ReplyDeleteI say that. I’m Californian with one Scots-Irish great-grandfather. Also I know it’s “have” although my mouth says “of.”
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm seeing in American English instead of "hadn't" done it is "wouldn't have" done it. Extremely annoying.
ReplyDeleteThat's the thing that some of the commenters on Facebook were mixing it up with. But that can be another post another day.
DeleteI'm Australian and 'hadn't done it' and 'wouldn't have done it' have slightly different meanings.
DeleteHadn't done it is a definitive statemnet while the 'wouldn't have' term is more speculative - eg if he was here he wouldn't have done it.
That's common to General English. There's a particular AmE use that MC is talking about—but that's for a different blog post.
DeleteA great thing about being Facebook friends with linguists is that I get to benefit from their daily observations of English. Here's a recent observation from John Wells:
ReplyDelete...wait. Years ago, John Wells suddenly ended his blog and said he was retiring (...from... his blog, apparently). So... instead, he just moved his blog to Facebook? Honestly, I feel cheated.
There's a big difference between blogging and posting an observation on Facebook.
DeleteI have often seen Americans use "would", rather than "had" in such circumstances - "if he wouldn't have seen him..." Either is a bit clunky!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if that's something you get from the German immigrants to the US - using "would" in the if part of the sentence is certainly something that our English teacher (in Germany) had to correct again and again. In German you can just use "würde" (=would) in both clauses (or in general you can use the same tenses in both clauses for all types of conditional sentences), which is what makes learning conditional sentences actually one of the hardest parts of learning English for us (that, and since or for sentences).
DeleteI prefer the simple "had he not seen him..." What's not to like?
DeleteI don't see it as a replacement for the have-less form, but rather as an alternative option. You could perhaps argue that it doesn't change the logical meaning, but the framing can certainly change as far as I'm concerned.
ReplyDelete"If John had closed the gate, the dog would have been unable to escape."
is a more matter-of-fact, present time assessment of causation, looking back at a past fact.
Whereas:
"If John had have closed the gate, the dog would have been unable to escape."
seems decidedly more accusatory to my ear, I think because you've pushed the framing back into the past ("had have" rather than "had"). You're putting the sentence in that past moment of action rather than looking back at it, so in this example there's much more of an implied sense of "Why did you do that John, you numpty!" about it.
This is an interesting observation, but I don't think that the difference is because "had have" moves the framing back into the past, as you put it. I do agree that "If John had closed the gate" sounds more matter-of-fact: it sounds like a simple statement of logical causation. If A had happened, B would have happened. What "had have" does, I think, is re-introduce something of the conditional/subjunctive mood that was once used in such clauses in the older usage: "Had John closed the gate", "Were he more careful", etc. The modern English usage "If John had closed" removes that special conditional/subjunctive mood and just uses the normal mood of the verb instead. "Had have closed" seems like an attempt to bring that conditional/subjunctive mood back – and I think that's why it feels like it has more of an emotional impact, the "accusatory" tone that you identify in this example. Rather than just being a dry statement of logic (X will happen if Y happens) it's emphasising the unreality of the action – the fact that this action was NOT performed (X happened because Y did NOT happen). In languages like German that still use a subjunctive form for that verb in those clauses, that aspect of unreality is strongly expressed, but it's not so strongly expressed in standard English. "Had have" feels like an attempt to remedy that.
DeleteBecause that 'of' has developed from 'have'
ReplyDeleteIn the expression "wouldn't of done" that is plainly true; but the origin (and indeed meaning) of this construction seems to be unclear, so I don't share your certainty.
ReplyDeleteThere's no reason a preposition (particularly one as meaningless as 'of') would show up in the middle of a verb string. It just wouldn't make sense to have a word that usually introduces nouns showing up randomly in a verb string.
ReplyDeleteI've tried to explain this to my (younger) English colleagues in vain - that they need an auxiliary instead of a preposition. But they've had so little grammar in school that they simply didn't understand the words I used. I actually gave up after that because it would have taken far too much time to explain how the grammar of their own language works - after all I learnt about the different types of words in primary school, so it's really the most basic basics that they are lacking. I was quite shocked though.
DeleteAh. Yes. I see what you mean. Ta.
ReplyDeleteI assume the "hadn't of" construction comes from a mishearing of "hadn't've". I would probably say "of" (if only because it irritates my husband!), but would never write it. Actually, I'd probably write "Had John not closed the gate", rather than "If John hadn't have closed it", although that does depend on the audience for whom I am writing. (BrE, Southern, elderly).
ReplyDeleteThose things are discussed in the linked posts on double contractions and of/'ve
DeleteI have a happy memory of overhearing a well-dressed, obviously educated 50ish lady in my native South West Scotland saying "He wouldn't've could done it".
ReplyDelete