Teacher Discussion Forums

Today I heard this statement from a student:

"I've never given her my number, yet."


I stated that this is better:

"I didn't give her my number yet."



"I've never....yet" is grammatically correct, no?


But it's awkward, right?



Thanks to anyone that can help.


--B

I prefer:

I haven't given her my number.
I've never given her my number.
I have never given her my number.
I haven't given her my number yet.

American English uses that awful simple past plus "yet" construction ("I didn't give her my number yet,"), but I would never use it.

Like Metal I think this is a British/American thing, but I won't irritate American readers by describing Past Simple .....yet as "awful".

I haven't given her my number yet implies I plan to at some point, while Metal's other examples leave it open. There's quite a funny discussion of this in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity

metal56 wrote:I prefer:

I haven't given her my number.
I've never given her my number.
I have never given her my number.
I haven't given her my number yet.

American English uses that awful simple past plus "yet" construction ("I didn't give her my number yet,"), but I would never use it.

Thanks for the response metal,

I am a Yank, and I've never used:

simple past + yet,

as well as,

I've never....yet.


Sounds awkward.

Thanks for the reply, and also thanks to low.

I would never use "I've never.....yet." because to me they describe two different things. "I haven't ......yet" means I might do it in the future; "I have never....." means in all my life, I didn't do it, not even once. For some reason the two ideas don't seem to mesh in my mind. Most likely it's just me

Lorikeet wrote:I would never use "I've never.....yet." because to me they describe two different things. "I haven't ......yet" means I might do it in the future; "I have never....." means in all my life, I didn't do it, not even once. For some reason the two ideas don't seem to mesh in my mind. Most likely it's just me

To me, the "yet" is just there for emphasis. "I have never been fishing", for example, gets the message over well enough

To me, the "yet" is just there for emphasis. "I have never been fishing", for example, gets the message over well enough

So you don't think yet implies that you're going to, or you hope to do it in the future?

I see what Lorikeet means about never and yet not seeming to gel, but note that Brix placed a comma before yet in the original example. That might suggest the speaker want to add a "twist" to the end of the statement, but maybe it would be better put thus:

"I've never given her my number. Well, not yet, anyway "

Isn't the phrase present in some American dialects? It sounds characteristic of Appalachian talk; I'm not sure about ebonics, but perhaps. Never is often used in these dialects, especially double negatives, in ways that seem substandard to most others: I don't never wear that kind of shirt.
The comma may not be rhetorical. The same things happens when too ends the sentence: some people use the comma and others don't. If it is rhetorical, an em dash or ellipses may be more effective, or more obvious.[/i]

To me, with the comma, dash or brackets it is the twist that lolwhites describes.

But without the comma it means what it means:

"Every day I do a fiendish crossword which I have high hopes of finishing one day but which I've never finished yet."

Though it seems to work better for repeated actions than it does for giving someone a phone number.

"I've never swum a length of the swimming pool underwater yet"