4 ms·

> it sounds like a perfectly natural thing to say when it's true It doesn't sound natural to me at all; it sounds incredibly awkward to me. In a situation like

> it sounds like a perfectly natural thing to say when it's true It doesn't sound natural to me at all; it sounds incredibly awkward to me. In a situation like that, I think people would say something like "someone would've been watching her at that moment".

lmm 5y ago
"someone would've had have been" doesn't sound remotely natural. "someone must've been watching her" would be legitimate, but doesn't have the same connotations; it humanises the watcher, whereas "she must've had been being watched" suggests it could have been an organization rather than an individual, and so feels more sinister.
- dataflow 5y ago
  If you're talking about being watched at a particular moment, you're not talking about "an organization" watching; you're talking about a person. And whether it's sinister or not is pretty beside the point. I'm saying that phrasing is pretty darn unnatural English, sinister or not. (And I meant to write "would've"; the "would've had have been" was just a typo...)
  - lmm 5y ago
    > If you're talking about being watched at a particular moment But you're not; you're talking about having been being watched, something that was an ongoing process at the time (past progressive). > And whether it's sinister or not is pretty beside the point. People choose their phrasing because they want to convey particular connotations. So you can't just say "this is a simpler way to say the same thing" if it carries different connotations. > I'm saying that phrasing is pretty darn unnatural English, sinister or not. All I can say is it sounds perfectly natural to me, as a native (British/Irish) English speaker.
    - dataflow 5y ago
      You're not going to get across the notion of an organization doing the "watching" sinisterly without additional context, at which point you don't need this awkward wording in the first place. Mind you, you yourself described the meaning as "someone was continuously watching her at the time". That's the natural interpretation of this sentence. I can't speak for BrE I guess, but in AmE the wording is quite jarring, and people would not opt for this wording when they could add "someone" or some other subject and make it sound so much more natural than awkwardly forcing it into passive voice. ("Someone would've been watching her", "someone would've had to have been watching her", "they would've been watching her", "they would've had to kept her under watch/surveillance", etc... the list goes on...)
      - lmm 5y ago
        > You're not going to get across the notion of an organization doing the "watching" sinisterly without additional context Of course you do. Consider "Do you ever feel like you're being watched?" versus "Do you ever feel like someone's watching you?" Both those sentences are natural English and in a certain sense they "mean the same"; nonetheless they convey a quite different feeling, and neither is a replacement for the other.
        dataflow 5y ago
        >> You're not going to get across the notion of an organization doing the "watching" sinisterly without additional context > Of course you do. Consider "Do you ever feel like you're being watched?" versus "Do you ever feel like someone's watching you?" I was talking about in that example. I was not making a claim about every arbitrary sentence containing the phrase "being watched". Understand that if you add enough contortions and make a sentence jarring enough, you won't get anything across without additional context. (To a human I mean. I guess I have to add that caveat because other you'll post another rebuttal about how a sufficiently strong AI would parse it just fine.)
        lmm 5y ago

lmm 5y ago

"someone would've had have been" doesn't sound remotely natural. "someone must've been watching her" would be legitimate, but doesn't have the same connotations; it humanises the watcher, whereas "she must've had been being watched" suggests it could have been an organization rather than an individual, and so feels more sinister.

dataflow 5y ago
If you're talking about being watched at a particular moment, you're not talking about "an organization" watching; you're talking about a person. And whether it's sinister or not is pretty beside the point. I'm saying that phrasing is pretty darn unnatural English, sinister or not. (And I meant to write "would've"; the "would've had have been" was just a typo...)
- lmm 5y ago
  > If you're talking about being watched at a particular moment But you're not; you're talking about having been being watched, something that was an ongoing process at the time (past progressive). > And whether it's sinister or not is pretty beside the point. People choose their phrasing because they want to convey particular connotations. So you can't just say "this is a simpler way to say the same thing" if it carries different connotations. > I'm saying that phrasing is pretty darn unnatural English, sinister or not. All I can say is it sounds perfectly natural to me, as a native (British/Irish) English speaker.
  - dataflow 5y ago
    You're not going to get across the notion of an organization doing the "watching" sinisterly without additional context, at which point you don't need this awkward wording in the first place. Mind you, you yourself described the meaning as "someone was continuously watching her at the time". That's the natural interpretation of this sentence. I can't speak for BrE I guess, but in AmE the wording is quite jarring, and people would not opt for this wording when they could add "someone" or some other subject and make it sound so much more natural than awkwardly forcing it into passive voice. ("Someone would've been watching her", "someone would've had to have been watching her", "they would've been watching her", "they would've had to kept her under watch/surveillance", etc... the list goes on...)
    - lmm 5y ago
      > You're not going to get across the notion of an organization doing the "watching" sinisterly without additional context Of course you do. Consider "Do you ever feel like you're being watched?" versus "Do you ever feel like someone's watching you?" Both those sentences are natural English and in a certain sense they "mean the same"; nonetheless they convey a quite different feeling, and neither is a replacement for the other.
      - dataflow 5y ago
        >> You're not going to get across the notion of an organization doing the "watching" sinisterly without additional context > Of course you do. Consider "Do you ever feel like you're being watched?" versus "Do you ever feel like someone's watching you?" I was talking about in that example. I was not making a claim about every arbitrary sentence containing the phrase "being watched". Understand that if you add enough contortions and make a sentence jarring enough, you won't get anything across without additional context. (To a human I mean. I guess I have to add that caveat because other you'll post another rebuttal about how a sufficiently strong AI would parse it just fine.)
        lmm 5y ago