Spoken: when did you last (took/take)...?

[ConfusedKi]

Hello everyone,

It seems that my English is falling apart the more time I spend teaching it! The English that I've learnt in the British education system is not enough to provide solid answers to some of my students' questions. The differences between American vs. British English, spoken vs. written and these-days English vs. back-in-the-days English are causing a lot of confusion in my head. I know that the following question should use the basic form of the verb take but for some reason I also believe it can use the past-tense form too. Could anyone shine a light on my little dark spot please?

When did you last take a holiday?
vs.
When did you last took a holiday?

Thank you in advance.

[JuanTwoThree]

Marking the past twice is not Standard English. In fact I'd stick my neck out and say that Standard English hardly ever marks anything twice.

This particular stricture and others are not adhered to in many other Englishes, so in them you will find your double pasts, as well as double negatives and other features.

I suppose we are exposed to more varieties of English than before: we get more and more of them directly from their speakers' mouths or their writers' keyboards, without the "benefit" of only Standard English speakers being widely heard or the written word having passed through the hands of editors (including the writers themselves) before we get to read it.

[fluffyhamster]

Some previous discussion about similar matters:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=2793

[Heath]

I've never met anyone or read any book (US, UK, Aussie, or other) that would say, "When did you took..." is okay.

So I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's just plain wrong.

[Macavity]

I think if you change the word order around a little and leave the "do support" out, you are okay with took . otherwise, what I teach is that where there is auxiliary support of this kind it's the "help verb" that does all the work - it shows person, taking on the 3rd person "s" where necessary, negation and tense - whilst the verb being supported reverts to its infinitive or base form.

So

When did you take your last holiday?

or

You took your last holiday when?


This is my feeling, anyway.

[JuanTwoThree]

Heath, there's certainly no Standard English that accepts double pasts, but they are widespread in other Englishes, the ones which are "wrong" if you like.

Your point about the two forms of an open question is interesting, Macavity. It must be something to do with marking, Theme/Rheme and may be connected with the need for the second element of a restrictive adverb to be an auxiliary when the adverb is fronted. I suppose a Wh- question word is a restrictive adverb in a sense. We favour

What can you do?

over

You can do what?

in order to front "What". Though not always. I'm afraid I'm too lazy to think it right through, but it must be something to do with it.

[sbourque]

The past tense is "took". When we ask a question, or make a negative, we use "did"+"take":
Did you take my book? No, I didn't take your book.

Although, as an English major, I recall seeing forms like "Took he the sword..." in 19th century (18th? older?) works.

[JuanTwoThree]

"Do-support" became almost completely ubiquitous from around the 16th to the 18th century so what you can remember probably predates or imitates a time before its prevalence. What most obviously held out against it were modal verbs and less obviously some verbs, all modally in meaning, like "I hope not" " I think not" and so on. So "knowst thou?" gave way to "Do you know?" via "Dost thou know" or something very like that. Which is what my father-in-law says BTW.

Other Englishes seem to have come to other conclusions. "Done gone" is a double marker, though more for the perfect than the past. "Drowneded" looks like a double past.

I think though that if anything zero-marking is more common than double-marking in non-standard Englishes.

Let's not forget "didn't used to" though I really don't want to start on that again.