"Did...used" grammatically okay? it seems both yes and no... weird

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Did the wind used to cry and the hills shout forth praise?

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[+3] - contrex - 04/09/2012It's the final 'd' of 'used' that is wrong. Whwn we ask a question using "did", the verb is in the infinitive form. Statement: I played tennis last year. Question: Did you play tennis...

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@oristarA,

I don't know about grammatically, but it sounds quite normal to me.

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@oristarA,

The word "used" isn't being used alone here.
"Used to" is an auxiliary verb used to express past habitual actions or states, but that are no longer done, or no longer occur in the present.

Did the wind used to cry. . .

The sentence is grammatical.

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@InfraBlue,

InfraBlue wrote:

The word "used" isn't being used alone here.
"Used to" is an auxiliary verb used to express past habitual actions or states, but that are no longer done, or no longer occur in the present.

Did the wind used to cry. . .

The sentence is grammatical.

Hard to understand.

In " He doesn't like English", "doesn't" is an auxiliary verb and is easy to be understood. But "used to"? With its special form, it seems difficult to crack it up.

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It's the final 'd' of 'used' that is wrong. Whwn we ask a question using "did", the verb is in the infinitive form.

Statement: I played tennis last year.
Question: Did you play tennis last year?

Statement: I ran (past tense) five kilometres yesterday.
Question: Did you run (infinitive) yesterday?
Answer: Yes, I ran five kilometres.

Statement: The wind used to cry.
Question: Did the wind use to to cry?

Statement: I used to smoke Marlboros.

Questions:
Did you use to smoke Marlboros?
Did he use to smoke Marlboros?
What cigarettes did Contrex use to smoke?

Answer:
He used to smoke Marlboros.

Anyhow, the quoted text is by Annie Dillard in "Teaching A Stone To Talk" (1982) also quoted (correctly) in "This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment" edited by Roger S. Gottlieb (1996).

It is widely misquoted with 'used' around the Web and I believe this is the origin of oristarA's confusion. The correct quotation is "Did the wind use to cry, and the hills shout forth praise?"

This is a snip of the (scanned) Google Books page:

http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p29/badoit/usetocry.jpg

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@contrex,

Quote:

It's the final 'd' of 'used' that is wrong. When we ask a question using "did", the verb is in the infinitive form.

That's certainly true of all lexical verbs, C. But the problem here is, 'used to' is not a lexical verb and it doesn't have an infinitive form.

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@contrex,

Thank you Contrex.

Being classically informative aside, the question seems still lingering.

The usage "use to cry" sounds not very much natural as that of "used to".

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@JTT,

JTT wrote:

Quote:
It's the final 'd' of 'used' that is wrong. When we ask a question using "did", the verb is in the infinitive form.

That's certainly true of all lexical verbs, C. But the problem here is, 'used to' is not a lexical verb and it doesn't have an infinitive form.

The usage "used to" remains as a ruptured beauty? Wink

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@JTT,

JTT wrote:

'used to' is not a lexical verb and it doesn't have an infinitive form.

OK let's call it the "base form" it that makes you happier. We use it when we say "Did he use to smoke?" or "She didn't use to swim before noon."

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@contrex,

contrex wrote:

JTT wrote:
'used to' is not a lexical verb and it doesn't have an infinitive form.

OK let's call it the "base form" it that makes you happier. We use it when we say "Did he use to smoke?" or "She didn't use to swim before noon."

"Use to" sounds tilted.

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You may use "use to", contrex, but we rude colonials use "used to". I don't know if we used to use "use to" but it's not the usage we usually use now. Get used to it.

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@contrex,

Quote:

OK let's call it the "base form" it that makes you happier.

That doesn't change the inherent problem, C. 'used to' does not have a base form. It has only one form, 'used to'.

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BBC Learning English (UK)

Quote:

Used to / didn't use to
When talking about things that we did in the past but don't do now we can use the expression used to. The negative form, to talk about things which we didn't do in the past but do now, is didn't use to.

esl.about.com (USA)

Quote:

Be careful: Use the infinitive form in questions or negative sentences:

Did you use to take the bus to work when you lived there? They didn't use to ask so many questions!

"Used not to" is called "formal style" by Michael Swan (a British writer) in Practical English Usage, 2e (Oxford University Press, 1995). He lists "didn't use to" as an informal style.

The Collins COBUILD English Dictionary (HarperCollins, 1995) includes these words: "If something used not to be done or used not to be the case, it was not done in the past or was not the case in the past. The forms did not use to and did not used to are also found, especially in spoken English."

The "Did he use to?" & "He didn't use to" base/infinitive forms are dominant in UK English. The formal "Used he [not] to [verb e.g.] smoke?" is very old-fashioned these days. John Mortimer's Rumpole says it now and then.

Anyhow, the author of the original piece used the base form. I suspect that some people are now just trolling: i.e. arguing purely for the sake of it and because of the person being argued with. The position that an informal usage, neither universal-in the US or UK, is the only possible and correct one is too stupid for any rational person to take seriously.

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My point was not that "used to" was the only form but rather that "use to", your usage, was not the only form, nor even necessarily everywhere the most common form. (And as a matter of fact, one of your mavens cites, "didn't use to" as an INformal style--better watch out, your own guys are gunning for you). I'm also surprised you didn't recognize the entire reply as a form of low humor.

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And, as far as I can tell, Oristar's quote is a snippet from an Annie Dillard poem. She is A) a respected stylist of the language and B) American.

1 Reply

@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

And, as far as I can tell, Oristar's quote is a snippet from an Annie Dillard poem. She is A) a respected stylist of the language and B) American.

I wrote this 2 days ago and showed a capture of the scanned Google Books page, which clearly shows ""Did the wind use to cry":

Quote:

Anyhow, the quoted text is by Annie Dillard in "Teaching A Stone To Talk" (1982) also quoted (correctly) in "This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment" edited by Roger S. Gottlieb (1996).

It is widely misquoted with 'used' around the Web and I believe this is the origin of oristarA's confusion. The correct quotation is "Did the wind use to cry, and the hills shout forth praise?"

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I admit I didn't read down that far in your post. I googled the quote as Oristar had it and got a number of hits as "used to", including several very serious pages, none of whom objected to the usage. Which indicates to me that "used" is in fact widely used, as I have maintaineed all along.

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@contrex,

Quote:

I suspect that some people are now just trolling: i.e. arguing purely for the sake of it and because of the person being argued with.

"because of the person being argued with" - you never argue language issues, C. After making bogus claims, you flee from the language issues.

Quote:

The position that an informal usage, neither universal-in the US or UK, is the only possible and correct one is too stupid for any rational person to take seriously.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why you can't discuss language issues - you can't understand what's going on. I didn't say which form was correct and MJ has stated that he didn't either.

It really is not very important as this is almost totally a collocation of speech.

Which makes one wonder how Collins could make the dumb comment,

"The forms did not use to and did not used to are also found, especially in spoken English."

For dog's sake, how the hell could they know that?

The salient point, which you are completely avoiding, is that 'used to' has one and only one form in English. It has no base form/infinitive form. We know this because it has never been used in that nonexistent form.

1 Reply

@JTT,

JTT wrote:

The salient point, which you are completely avoiding, is that 'used to' has one and only one form in English. It has no base form/infinitive form. We know this because it has never been used in that nonexistent form.

Well, an 'infinitive' form certainly appears to be mimicked in such perfectly acceptable constructions as "did he use to smoke?". You might almost say that if an infinitive form does not exist, it is sometimes considered necessary to invent one.

1 Reply

@contrex,

Quote:

You might almost say that if an infinitive form does not exist, it is sometimes considered necessary to invent one.

Or, possibly, just possibly, there is no need at all to invent artificial aspects for language.

There are a number of cases in language where one form suffices - we don't feel any great need to inflect modal verbs for third person singular. Modal verbs do quite well in English with only one form. They don't inflect, as I said, they have no past tense.

'used to' is also a modal of sorts, a semi-modal/periphrastic modal. Why shouldn't it operate as a modal does since that's its greater similarity?

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"Did...used" grammatically okay? it seems both yes and no... weird

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