El_Chivo wrote:Very tricky, dudes, but the negation argument is specious. . "Have to" isn't a phrasal verb. It isn't a modal auxilliary either. The verb is actually have, not have to, and, according to the American Heritage, it means must. So, when you say "must not," the auxilliary must isn't receiving the negation; the verb that follows is: not smoke, not go, not scream. The obligation is not negated; get it? With "do not have" you're negating theverb that indicates obligation (have) and the infinitive that follows is not negated: to smoke, to go, to scream. The result is that the positive forms are synonymous, but the negatives aren't.
I think the opposite of must is may, not mustn't, though I'm open to other suggestions.
Also, some of the arguments I'm seeing seem to ignore the fact that two words can be synonyms though all of their definitions may not be. And it may also seem very awkward to use one or the other in different instances, though sometimes they can be interchanged.
Hmmmm. Possibly so. I've never seen it analyzed in quite this way before. Suppose we look at it again in some detail.
I'll grant that "
have to" is not a phrasal verb, though it's tempting for all of us to sometimes present it that way, however innocently, simply because of its apparent contrast (or, for many, apparent synonymity) with
must. We know that because, if we remember that English is fundamentally a SVC language, and then look at a sentence like:
I have to (not) smoke.
...we can see that if the verb in this sentence were
have to, then the rest of the sentence (other than the subject) would still have to be classified as a verb, which cannot, by itself, serve as a complement after another verb. On the other hand, if the verb is
have, then we see that the
to attaches to
smoke, forming an "infinitive with to", which we can understand as a verbal. Verbals
can indeed serve as noun complements in a sentence. (Pardon my prattle about fundamentals we all know, but my brain seems to work better when I retrace the obvious, sometimes.
) I suppose our confusion is compounded from looking at the very common truncated versions:
I have to! You have to! He has to! These appear, at first blush, to be complete Subject/Verb sentences on their own.
I'll also grant that
have to is not usually a modal auxiliary, although when it is used as in the example sentence above, a reasonable case could be made that it is. One of the defining characteristics of modal auxiliaries is that they are movable, and in negations always immediately precede the word
"not". Thus
She can go is negated as
She can not go. In our example sentence above,
have to operates in the same way (which probably is why it seems a little wierd, and probably would be quite rare). But let's recognize that this is not a common way to use
have to. Much more usual would be,
You have to wear your heavy socks, or
She has to take a test tomorrow, or
Bill has to join the Army, or
We'll have to call a plumber. Actually, this last example helps to prove beyond question, I think, that
have to cannot be a modal auxiliary (in this sentence, at least) because it co-exists with
will, and two modal auxiliaries cannot reside in the same clause.
There is other evidence as well for
have to not being either a phrasal verb or a modal auxiliary. This is not a comprehensive argument!
But I'm having trouble reconciling the rest of your contention,
El_Chivo. Far be it from me to argue with American Heritage that
have means
must. I'm not that bold. But I think we have to be careful just how we interpret what AH means by "
have means must". We would be mistaken if we believe that they are identical, and although I have not consulted AH in this instance, I'd be willing to bet that they have a robust disclaimer counselling caution to the reader against too literal an interpretation of the equality. If they were identical, then we could substitute one for the other, but we've already seen that we cannot. What we can sometimes do, in particular and explainable instances of use, is substitute
must for
have to. But, I submit, that does
not mean that the full meaning of the alternate utterances is identical. So, while I won't disagree with your description above of which word is negated and which is not with regard to
must and
have to, I'm afraid I cannot buy your conclusion: "...
the positive forms are synonymous, but the negatives aren't."
Swan (p. 284), who most generally tells things in ways I can get behind, seems to support my argument (actually, I guess it's the other way around, since he wrote the book before I made the argument
) that
must and
have (got) to are similar, but not quite the same. He says that the obligation implied with use of either of them seems to come from the speaker if she chooses to use
must, and from outside if the speaker chooses
have (got) to. I have found that the distinction seems to be clear in my mind whenever I've looked closely, as long as I'm willing to see apparent reality of meaning in the uses of either phrase
in context. I guess what I'm saying is: the distinction works for me, and it works all the time. It also easily explains (to me and to my students) when to use
must and when to use
have to, or how to interpret the particular meaning when one hears or reads them. It easily explains why our example sentence above,
"I have to not smoke" sounds funny, but
"I must not smoke" doesn't. (Although the former would be perfectly understandable if, in the context, it really means: "I have been told not to smoke.") But I also can see that it sometimes takes a certain flexibility of interpretation in some contexts, and perhaps not everybody is prepared to grant that flexibility.
Larry Latham
