The problem with the analysis that "used to" is a modal is the fact that
it takes do-support.

1) She used to play soccer.
2) She didn't used to play soccer.

3) She used to play soccer, didn't she?
4) She didn't used to play soccer, did she?

"would, "ought", "should" etc. never take do-support.

Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri




>>> Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]> 06/14/11 7:55 PM >>>
Karl,
    If "used to" was a typical past tense, though, you would expect to
have a present tense version of it, complete with third person
singular (He uses to), and we don't have that. The form of "use" that
takes the present ("I use money to buy love) is not fused and has a
different meaning.
    "Used to" is parallel in many ways to "would." It denotes an
habitual
pattern in the past. I can't think of a present time application.
    At what point does something become close enough to the other modals
to be modalized?
    How about "hadn't ought to?" On the surface, that would seem double
tensed. But "ought to," like "used to," doesn't have a finite
alternative.

Craig


Bill,
>
> But is it fully fused if you want to negate with 'did'? Doesn't that
> suggest that "supposed to" is NOT completely modalized, since it's
still
> forming negation the in the same way as other main verbs?
>
> And I'm sure you know this, but of course with 'was supposed to' the
-ed
> there comes from the past participle, not the plain past tense marker,
> as with 'used to', so there's no doubling of the tense marking, and
your
> brain's resistance to dropping the -ed there seems logical.
>
> Karl
>
> On 06/14/2011 11:45 AM, Spruiell, William C wrote:
>> I remember being quite put out by "iced cream" when I encountered the
>> example in a historical linguistics class when I was in early
graduate
>> school -- I had this comfortable sense of righteous indignation at
>> people who were writing "ice tea," and then the example
contextualized
>> the entire thing at the expense of my inner prescriptivist. Darn
history
>> and its humility-inducing ways.
>>
>> For what it's worth, the historical COHA corpus has an 18:2 tilt in
>> favor of "didn't use to," with the bulk of "use"-examples being 1890
or
>> earlier and all two "used"-examples being later. But those are very
>> small numbers, and at least one of them is a potentially false hit,
so
>> I'm not sure how much that tells us. For modern English, COCA has
2:2,
>> so it's a wash. Google-searching gets you 123:73 (million), keeping
in
>> mind that Googling gets you tons of false hits of various sorts (the
>> results only mean much if the factors causing the false hits are
>> relatively equivalent for both of the things you're searching for).
>>
>> My brain wants to treat "used to" as a fully fused form, analogous to
>> "supposed to," and since I think "I wasn't suppose to do that" looks
>> odd, I don't want to write "I didn't use to do that."  But the
numbers
>> seem to be slightly in favor of the "didn't use to" variant, and that
>> ice cream effect will probably tilt things further.
>>
>> --- Bill Spruiell
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
>> [[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2011 11:37 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: didn't use(d) to
>>
>> Whether or not there is an approved spelling, this looks like a case
of
>> the “ice cream” phenomenon, where a final dental stop (/d/ or /t/)
gets
>> deleted before a consonant-initial word.  Other examples are
>>
>> skim milk
>> ice tea
>> stuff peppers
>> etc.
>>
>> The two spellings would probably be pronounced the same, without the
>> final /d/.
>>
>> Herb
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dick Veit
>> Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2011 10:45 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: didn't use(d) to
>>
>> Two quotati>> Furst's Spies of the Balkans, p. 102, Kindle edition).
>> "She didn't used to smoke around the kids..." (Kate Atkinson, When
Will
>> There Be Good News?, p. 126, Kindle edition).
>>
>> So which is it, didn't use to or didn't used to?
>>
>> A few usage guides I consulted prescribe "didn't use to," but others
say
>> both are standard. In my own writing, I probably would have used
"didn't
>> used to."
>>
>> On the one hand, "used to/didn't use to" would parallel other verbs
>> (laughed/didn't laugh), but, on the other, we're talking about a
>> quasimodal, and with modals we can expect significant variations from
>> other verbs. Pronunciation is no help--both "use to" and "used to"
are
>> spoken identically as "useta."
>>
>> Thoughts?
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