Usage of "HAD TO" after "WERE" - is this correct ??

Question

I know this is wrong.. Can any one please explain me why ??

In Renaissance, painters were so impressed with Da Vinci that they had to ignore their own training and designate as masterpiece anything he painted.

Are there any strict rules for tense order ?? I know that sometimes tense orders don't make sense. But many times it leaves me confused.

Thanks,
Sharad.

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

Sequence of tenses.

The general trend is to use "present oriented tenses" together in the same sentence, and "past oriented tenses" together in the same sentence, but there are many cases that don't follow the trend.

Present oriented tenses: present perfect ... present ... future (of the present), i.e., "will".
Past oriented tenses: ..... past perfect ........ past ....... future (of the past), i.e., "would".

There is nothing unusual at all in your example. It is not all wrong.

In [the] Renaissance, painters were so impressed with Da Vinci that they had to ignore their own training and {they had to} designate as [a] masterpiece anything he painted.

"were", "had", and "painted" are all past. Nothing unusual here.
Maybe the infinitive "to ignore" and the implied infinitive "to designate" threw you off the track?

Anonymous · Answer

Hi Jim,

I'll bite.

"Had to" does not give the time frame when one "had to" . So the tense we use after "were so impresses" should be in timeframe that is after "painters got impressed". so i thought the correct statement would be -

..were so impressed ..that .. they ignored and designated ..

Let me know where I am going wrong here. I somehow feel that "had to" does fit well in above statement.

25 years ago, I had to get polio shots to stay healthy. Correct ??

1> During my choldhood, I had to get polio shots to stay healthy.
2> During my choldhood, I got polio shots to stay healthy.
3> When I was child, I got polio shots to stay healthy.
4> When I was child, I had to get polio shots to stay healthy.

I think 2, and 3 are correct.

"Had" past perfect. I thought "past perfect" tense can not follow "past tense" in a sentence where one clause is dependent on other.

Please comment.

thanks,
Sharad.

CalifJim · Answer

All four sentences about the polio shots are correct!

Here's where you are getting off the track:

"had" by itself does not indicate the Past Perfect tense. It indicates the Past Perfect tense when it is followed by a past participle!

Present, Past, Present Perfect, Past Perfect of "take":
takes, took, has taken, had taken.

But what if the main verb is "have"? Then you need one "have" as the sign of the perfect and another "have" to show what the main verb is.

Present, Past, Present Perfect, Past Perfect of "have":
has, had, has had, had had.

Present, Past, Present Perfect, Past Perfect of "have to take":
has to take, had to take, has had to take, had had to take.

"has to" (or "have to") indicates a present obligation; "had to" indicates a past obligation.
"has had to" ("have had to") and "had had to" are less used -- they are not used at all in your original example sentence.

Does this help?

Anonymous · Answer

Jim,
thanks.. your explanation cleared lot of my doubts...

Can you give usage examples for "has had to take" and "had had to take" ??

1> He has had to live or die situations.

Does this mean
He has faced "to live or die" situations. OR ??
He has faced "have to live or die" situations in past.

2> He had had to live or die situations. Is this correct ?? Or I should be saying "

He had have to live or die situations. - meaning, in past he has faced "have to live or die" situations.

3> I have had problems in past. Does this mean " I have suffered from problems in past" ??
where have is used as verb in past tense, meaning "suffered from" ..

thanks,
Sharad.

CalifJim · Answer

Sharad, Sharad!

You are getting yourself tangled up here!

Let's see how we can get you untangled.

He has had to live or die situations.
He had had to live or die situations.
He had have to live or die situations.

None of these is exactly right. You want to include the idea of "live-or-die situations", so let's use the hyphens and form the correct adjective "life-or-death".
You also want to use the verb "have" to mean "face", so that you want to use "to have life-or-death situations" to mean "to face life-or-death situations". Unfortunately, that's not going to work very well. In English we don't often talk about "having a situation" when we mean "facing a situation". So, just so we can illustrate "have to" as the main verb, let's talk about "facing a life-or-death situation" instead of "having a life-or-death situation."

What have we got so far? We've got the end of the sentences we want to build: "to face a life-or-death situation". The beginnings will all be forms of "he has to", OK?

Present: He is now obligated to face such a situation:
He has to face a life-or-death situation.
Past: He was then obligated to face such a situation:
He had to face a life-or-death situation.
Present Perfect: He has been obligated to face such a situation.
He has had to face a life-or-death situation.
Past Perfect: He had been obligated to face such a situation.
He had had to face a life-or-death situation.

These are the four possibilities I think you were looking for.

As for your other question: I have had problems in [the] past. Does this mean "I have suffered from problems in [the] past" ?
Yes. And this is the Present Perfect Tense, not the Past. The Past would be "I had problems (in the past)" or "I suffered from problems (in the past)".

___

Concerning examples with "has had to take" and "had had to take":

My uncle is 78 years old. He has had to take heart medicine for 30 years. Before that, he had had eye troubles and had had to take special medicine for his eyes.

My car has been very unreliable lately. It has broken down three times this week. This means that I have had to take the bus to work three times this week. When the same thing happened last summer, the bus route did not pass through my neighborhood, so I had had to take a taxi.

The Past Perfect of the semi-modal "have to" is not very common. You can substitute the Simple Past in most cases.

Anonymous · Answer

Jim,

Thanks for making all the corrections.. I am able to follow what you mentioned above.
I need to pay careful attention to tenses for couple of more weeks to be comfortable in the usage.. Thanks for taking so much interest. It's hard to unlearn the wrong usage i have learnt and used so far.

Sharad.

Usage of "HAD TO" after "WERE" - is this correct ??

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