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Cho7712 Posted 13 years ago
Grammar

what is the full sentence?

Hi,
I have some trouble with understanding this bold sentence.

a; You never listen to me.
b; Yes, I did.

Is it a must that the adverb 'never' should be recoverable from 'did'?
and the utterance of b is understood as
'Yes, I never listened to you'?
  

Top answer

b; Yes, I did. It's incorrect. Listen is present tense and did is past tense.

  • b; Yes, I did.
  • It's incorrect.
  • Listen is present tense and did is past tense.
  • The dialogue should read: A You never listen to me.
  • B Yes, I do.
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6 Answers
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cho7712a; You never listen to me.b; Yes, I did.
It's incorrect. Listen is present tense and did is past tense. The dialogue should read:

A You never listen to me.
B Yes, I do.

Person B disagrees with person A. B's reply is as complete or "full" as it gets. You could say Yes, I listen to you but peo
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Thank you for this correction.
But I'm wondering about the reason why never is excluded from the recovered version. What reason is there to explain that?
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If a person claims that he listens to someone, he cannot possible say that he never listens. Emotion: speechless He would be contradictin
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Thanks for the reply.
But I'm afraid that I can't follow your suggestion, even I feel I'm lost.
What I want to ask is in terms of syntactic structure the possible reason for prohibiting never from being projected to appear in the recovered sentence.

And I'm doubtful whether this case has to do with the example below.
A; I don't like bugs.
B; Yes, I do.

Wha
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cho7712But I'm afraid that I can't follow your suggestion, even I feel I'm lost.
I'm lost as well. There may not be a syntactic reason for omitting never. It just doesn't make sense to include it in any kind of version that states a person listens. Always would be a better choice:

You never listen to me.
I always
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I think there is some misunderstanding, if I guess right. The original question, here I rephrase it in more concise way;

You never listen to me
Yes, I do = Yes, I never listen to you
Yes, I do = Yes, I listen to you

According to your first answer, the latter seems to be correct.
And I would like to know why never is omitted in terms of synt

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