Re: What I should have done is(was)....

Robert Lieblich wrote:
Mike Lyle wrote:
Skitt wrote:
Skitt wrote:

Add the right word after I should have __________ the doctor
immediately.

"To see" or "see" is just flat wrong.

Boy, did I screw that one up royally.

Add the right word at the blank:

I should have __________ the doctor immediately.

"To see" or "see" is just flat wrong.

Yes, but the sentences feel different to me. (Quite apart from the
way your example reminds me of the beginning of /Catch-22/.) The
"What I should have done was ..." brings sequence of tenses into
play, not unlike reported speech.

"What" is a pronoun, a substantive. It's the simple subject of the
sentence; the full subject is "What I should have done." That's a
substantive phrase. "To see" is an infinitive, which can be, and here
is, used as a noun, another substantive. Hence, the sentence is
grammatically balanced in the form "What I should have done was [to]
see the doctor immediately." It is unbalanced if you replace the
infnitive with "seen," because then the subjective complement of
"what" is "seen". But a subjective complement must be a noun or
pronoun, and in the nominative case if that matters. "Seen" flunks
the first test -- it ain't no noun or pronoun.

If it matters, the version with "see" or even "to see" sounds much
better to my native speaker's ear than the one with "seen." Those of
you who feel otherwise are entitled to do so, but it would help if you
could invoke some sort of grsmmatical analysis in support --
preferably one that makes some sort of sense.

OK, I'll try to make some sense -- not as analytically as you did, but more intuitively. The way I see the sentence I supported is as I show below, putting what I believe to be an elision in brackets:

"What I should have done was [: I should have] seen the doctor immediately."

With the elision, the first "should have" is serving both the
"done" and the "seen".

Googling and substituting the verb "go" for "see" (to get more results), I got:

on the Web
"should have done is go" -- 1130 hits
"should have done is to go" -- 18 hits
"should have done is gone" -- 857 hits

in Google Books
"should have done is go" -- 3 hits
"should have done is to go" -- 0 hits
"should have done is gone" -- 19 hits

It seems, I have quite a bit of company for my beliefs, especially so in books.

Right or wrong, I have now figured out why the infinitive seems unnatural to me. It's all in the way one looks at things.
--
Skitt (AmE)
looking things up, and things are looking up

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Linux---> The OS for The Homeless <<<--------
    ... > Doesn't it make you Linux fools feel cheap to beg for hardware support for ... You admit freely Billy goat that you need to reboot ... free GNU/Linux LiveCDs like Knoppix, ... flat as a pancake flat footed flat fish. ...
    (alt.os.linux)
  • Re: MAMEWORLD is DEAD ?
    ... I use Ubuntu as well as Windows. ... >> functionality on a Windows system you NEED to be admin. ... I do support for a living and most if not all the users ... In fact if it WERE true IT workers everywhere would flat out ...
    (alt.games.mame)
  • Re: Flattening a big table top
    ... Ordinary studs are seldom straight. ... material from which to create something which is flat and square. ... How many legs? ... inches to support a 16' span. ...
    (rec.woodworking)
  • Re: Land, Labour and Capital Taxation....
    ... >> Flat false. ... The burden of proof is on you to support them. ... >You do not not know the difference between market and economic rent. ... flat wrong, as usual. ...
    (sci.econ)
Loading