'I would like to have done' vs 'I would have liked to do'

Question

YUK:  I would have liked to have been there [ too much verb! ]Which do we all prefer?  I would like to have been there or I would have liked to be there.  Same?  No difference?

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

Oh, I hate this one.

I would like to have been there. = Now I wish I had been there

I would have liked to be there. = I wished to be there then.

Blue Jay · Answer

What I would write:
I would have liked to have been there.
What I would probably say:
I wish I coulda bin there.

Khoff · Answer

Philip[ too much verb! ]

That reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from Firefly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFPbAqOKeV0

(For those of you not (yet) FIrefly fans, yes, that's Ron Glass from "Barney Miller.")

CSnyder · Answer

Blue JayWhat I would probably say:I wish I coulda bin there.

Well, why don't we just change this a little bit?

I wished I could have been there, or I wanted to have been there.

Mister Micawber · Answer

Or I would have liked to have been able to have been there?

Blue Jay · Answer

Mister MicawberOr I would have liked to have been able to have been there?

Oh, Lord, MM! Philip was upset over five verbs, and you've made it eight!

CalifJim · Answer

PhilipI would have liked to be there.

When I researched this some time ago I found that most of the sources I found on-line that contained an opinion about this said that the form shown above is the correct one. I have recommended it myself in a few posts here and there over the years.

CJ

Mister Micawber · Answer

CalifJim: PhilipI would have liked to be there the form shown above is the correct one.

...and the rationale given?

CalifJim · Answer

Mister Micawber...and the rationale given?

Many of the sources are simply dogmatic, so we can't say that any rationale is given at all.

Garner 2009: would have liked. This phrase should invariably be followed by a present-tense infinitive–hence would have liked to go, not *would have liked to have gone, *would have liked to have read. The erroneous phrasings are very common ...

The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar calls "I would have liked to have done it" a syntactic blend of "I would have liked to do it" and "I would like to have done it", and says that such a blend "... might be regarded as merely stylistically awkward, or as grammatically dubious ..."

For those that give a rationale, it boils down to a "sequence of tenses" problem. Sometimes the claim is that the past is already shown in the main clause (I would have liked), so the perfect infinitive is basically redundant. Here's a more detailed rationale along those lines from http://www.sepo.net/books/english-grammar/pitfalls-to-avoid/

Now in the sentence "I should have liked to have gone to see the circus" the way to find out the proper sequence is to ask yourself the question—what is it I "should have liked" to do? and the plain answer is "to go to see the circus." I cannot answer—"To have gone to see the circus" for that would imply that at a certain moment I would have liked to be in the position of having gone to the circus. But I do not mean this; I mean that at the moment at which I am speaking I wish I had gone to see the circus. The verbal phrase I should have liked carries me back to the time when there was a chance of seeing the circus and once back at the time, the going to the circus is a thing of the present. This whole explanation resolves itself into the simple question,—what should I have liked at that time, and the answer is "to go to see the circus," therefore this is the proper sequence, and the expression should be "I should have liked to go to see the circus."
_______

Geoff Pullum recognizes a difference among all the different versions, but recognizes equally that the differences are so subtle that's it's nearly impossible to say whether anyone has made a mistake in using one form or another:

... If there are mistakes out there, I think they involve people saying one that isn't the one they really meant; but some of the truth-conditional differences are subtle, so not only would it be hard to convince someone they had made an error, it would be hard even to convince yourself.

The most interesting link on the topic is http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3941

A chart there shows that the use of the double 'have' (I would have liked to have gone) has gone from 0% to 15% from 1810 to 2011 (compared with I would have liked to go). Surprisingly, still only 15% in 2011, so maybe an argument might be made purely on the basis of frequency of use that "I would have liked to go" is better?

CJ

Mister Micawber · Answer

Makes perfect sense!  Ta.

'I would like to have done' vs 'I would have liked to do'

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