Admittedly English is not my primary language, but "She would have had to have been being watched" seems to be a construct used in a class, but not something you would hear in day-to-day English.
It's a very contorted phrase. I struggle to think of a context in which it makes sense. I honestly don't know what it's supposed to mean. It's a mixture of subjunctive mood and passive voice, both of which detract from clarity.
You can make unclear grammatical constructions in any language. If your aim is clarity, and not obfuscation, then you just eliminate tangled grammar such as this example.
I will attempt to offer a re-phrasing with added context, though:
"The only way that anyone could have known X about her, would be if she were being observed."
(Many english speakers would substitute "was" for "were", because the subjunctive mood is rarely taught to schoolchildren in the UK. That is to say, colloquial english is generally pretty sloppy.)
If a native english speaker like me struggles with an english phrase, there's something wrong with that phrase. If I find myself constructing a phrase like that, my first instinct is that my thoughts must be unclear, because my words are unclear. I'd consider thinking again, and perhaps even re-writing an entire paragraph, just to avoid a phrase like that.
The subjunctive in German is routine and explicit. Indeed, the word "were" in my re-phrasing is pronounced in parts of northeast of england to rhyme with "bear", because it comes from the germanic subjunctive "wäre". But in general, subjunctives in English are concealed - we don't use subjunctive forms of verbs much, the listener is supposed to infer subjunctive mood from the presence of words like "if" and "would".
Twain is winding us up; after all, he was a satirist. The German language is pretty regular, compared with English. It's quite easy to learn. English must be a nightmare to learn, as a foreigner.
Obviously the situation is fairly rare, but it sounds like a perfectly natural thing to say when it's true. I don't think it's an artificial example at all (whereas e.g. no-one actually says "buffalo" as a verb).
> 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".
"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.
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...)
> 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.
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...)
I feel like I'm being gaslighted by half the people in this thread that are saying that "have been being watched" is a normal phrase.
For context, I was born and raised in Northern NJ with Jamaican parents, and have lived in Michigan for the past 10 years. I have never heard anyone use grammar like this.
It's a very contorted phrase. I struggle to think of a context in which it makes sense. I honestly don't know what it's supposed to mean. It's a mixture of subjunctive mood and passive voice, both of which detract from clarity.
You can make unclear grammatical constructions in any language. If your aim is clarity, and not obfuscation, then you just eliminate tangled grammar such as this example.
I will attempt to offer a re-phrasing with added context, though:
"The only way that anyone could have known X about her, would be if she were being observed."
(Many english speakers would substitute "was" for "were", because the subjunctive mood is rarely taught to schoolchildren in the UK. That is to say, colloquial english is generally pretty sloppy.)
If a native english speaker like me struggles with an english phrase, there's something wrong with that phrase. If I find myself constructing a phrase like that, my first instinct is that my thoughts must be unclear, because my words are unclear. I'd consider thinking again, and perhaps even re-writing an entire paragraph, just to avoid a phrase like that.
The subjunctive in German is routine and explicit. Indeed, the word "were" in my re-phrasing is pronounced in parts of northeast of england to rhyme with "bear", because it comes from the germanic subjunctive "wäre". But in general, subjunctives in English are concealed - we don't use subjunctive forms of verbs much, the listener is supposed to infer subjunctive mood from the presence of words like "if" and "would".
Twain is winding us up; after all, he was a satirist. The German language is pretty regular, compared with English. It's quite easy to learn. English must be a nightmare to learn, as a foreigner.