better had ~ had better: syntax

[James Smith]

If by comment you mean what would I say, I'd say the
first, the second sounding very artificial, unnatural.


--- Damien Hall <halldj at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:

....
>
> "New York buses are seldom red, but London buses
> always *have* been."
>
> My intuition is that many, if not most, Americans
> would use the following as a
> default version of that sentence:
>
> "New York buses seldom are red, but London buses
> *always* have been."
>
> A friend is doing some systematic work on this
> difference and is wondering
> whether the different tendencies reflect different
> prescriptions, or simply
> competing tendencies, where it so happens that one
> of the possibilities is
> favoured in American English and the other in
> British, though both are in fact
> available to both sets of speakers.
>
> Any comments?
>
> Thanks -
>
> Damien Hall
> University of Pennsylvania
>


=====
James D. SMITH                 |If history teaches anything
South SLC, UT                  |it is that we will be sued
jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com     |whether we act quickly and decisively
                               |or slowly and cautiously.



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