| 词组 | ought |
| 释义 | ought 1. Ought is a little awkward to put into the negative. In writing, ought not is the usual form, and it may be followed by the bare infinitive or the infinitive with to: • ... it ought not to be weighed in the balance — Henry L. Stimson, New Republic, 22 Nov. 1954 • ... we ought not be completely absorbed in the technique of the law —Harlan F. Stone, quoted in Commonweal, 7 June 1940 • ... though professors ought not shout —Neil Schaef-fer, College English, February 1976 • ... ought they not ask for membership in the new U.N. Trusteeship Council? —Time, 17 Mar. 1947 • We really ought not expect more than one or two theories a generation —Nehemiah Jordan, Themes in Speculative Psychology, 1968 • But thousands of others ought not to be in prison at all —Karl Menninger, quoted in Psychology Today, February 1969 Although ought not is used in speech, it does seem a bit stuffy for everyday use. Oughtn't is one spoken substitute. In the U.S. it is regionally limited, being found most commonly in Midland and Southern areas of the Atlantic Seaboard and in parts of the Northern Midland area. It has somewhat limited use in writing, mostly in reported speech or light prose: • You oughtn't to have to trot up there every time somebody gets it into his head he wants to ask you something —William Ruckleshaus, quoted in N. Y. Times Mag., 19 Aug. 1973 • ... that's why Communist China oughtn't to be used here —W. E. Chilton III, quoted in U.P.I. Reporter, 15 July 1971 • Muriel thought she oughtn't to disturb Roy — George P. Elliot, Esquire, February 1972 • ... but he oughtn't to have left out the gambling — David Williams, Punch, 15 June 1966 In the U.S. hadn't ought is in a sort of complementary distribution with oughtn't, being chiefly a Northern form. Bryant 1962 explains this form as a survival of an old use of ought as a past participle. It is found only in speech (Guth 1985 characterizes it as informal) and in fictional speech: • ... and she kind of whispers to me, "Say, you hadn't ought to kid the servants like that." —Sinclair Lewis, The Man Who Knew Coolidge, 1928 • "But he hadn't ought to be telling lies about Cleve Pikestaff." —Hodding Carter, Southwest Rev., Winter 1948 The British equivalent of the American hadn't ought is didn't ought. It is aspersed in one way or another in various British usage books. It seems to be a spoken form only, and a footnote in Quirk et al. 1985 suggests that it may be a dwindling form, since it was the least popular negative form in a test of British teenage informants. Here are a couple of older examples: • Dixon was promoted in 1948 to be ambassador in Prague. [British Foreign Secretary Ernest] Bevin later commented, "I didn't ought to have sent you to that awful place" —Times Literary Supp., 29 Feb. 1968 • "Don't talk to your mother like that, Herbert," she flared up. "You didn't ought to have brought a woman like that into my house...." —W. Somerset Maugham, Quartet, 1949 2. Some commentators (Follett 1966, for example) insist on retaining to before the infinitive after ought in every instance; others (Evans 1957, for instance) say to is optional in negative statements. Bernstein 1971 criticizes both sides, saying the to is optional in either negative or positive statements when something intervenes between ought and the infinitive, and he provides two examples of positive statements. Quirk et al. 1985 reports that tests of young people in both Great Britain and the U.S. showed the omission of to widely acceptable in what he calls "nonassertive contexts." Our files have only a couple of examples of omitted to in positive contexts from written sources; they would seem to fit the description of "nonassertive." Here is one: • ... find stronger rationalizations for why people ought better communicate —Allan G. Mottus, Women's Wear Daily, 27 Aug. 1973 Here is an example with the intervening matter mentioned by Bernstein: • They ought logically go first to the standing committee —N. Y. Times, 28 Dec. 1966 But in edited prose, retention of the to is usual: • ... the standard against which men ought to be measured —Ward Just, Atlantic, October 1970 Things are different in negative contexts. If you look back at the examples in section 1, you will note that to was often omitted after ought not, but retained after oughtn't and the double modal forms. We cannot say that this evidence is definitive, but there seems to be a noticeable tendency to retain the to in the spoken forms (one of the ought not to examples is from speech, too). Quirk et al. 1985 says that to tends to be retained in assertive contexts. 3. Hadn't ought and didn't ought we have looked at above. In the U.S. hadn't ought is a geographical variant rather than a social variant. The positive forms had ought and should ought, however, are characteristic of uneducated speech. Bryant says that had ought is, like hadn't ought, a Northern form, but an uncultivated one: • ... and so they had ought to be quiet, for they have nothin' to fight about —Thomas Chandler Halliburton, The Clockmaker, 1837 Should ought is a favorite of Ring Lardner's characters: • "They should only ought to of had one...." — You Know Me Al, 1916 4. See had ought, hadn't ought. |
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