What Grice Ought To Know

All he did!

From the OED:

"ought is, originally the past tense of OWE v. (see also discussion s.v.).
Like other Primitive Germanic preterite-present verbs, OWE v. originally formed
its past tense with a dental element suffixed immediately to the stem.
Compare Old Frisian chte, Old Saxon hta, Old Icelandic átta, Old Swedish aatte
(Swedish (now regional) åtte), Old Danish ate, ottæ (early modern Danish aatte),
Gothic aihta."

"This continues in Middle English, early inflected as a normal past tense
with 2nd singular -est, plural -en, later -e, but frequently uninflected towards
the end of the period. ‘Double’ past tense forms, with the regular past
tense suffix added (see forms) occur occasionally from the 15th cent. In Middle
English, in main verb senses (see branch I.), a past participle use
develops, which after the 17th cent. is restricted to Scots."

"Additionally in these senses in Scots, the word shows a tendency to develop
present tense and present participle inflections, reflecting the newer
present tense uses, while retaining the uninflected past tense form for past tense
uses, In modal verb use (see branch II.), following the development of
present senses, inflected present tense forms are attested from the 16th cent.
onwards."

"The evidence is sparse, suggesting that this is a sporadic independent
development in dialects of different regions and periods. On the other hand the
development of a past participle and infinitive use in conjunction with other
auxiliaries in branch II. occurs late, but establishes itself strongly in
British and U.S. dialects from the 19th cent. onwards. "Ought" remains the
ordinary past tense of owe throughout Middle English. Its development of present
and future reference in modal use can be compared with MUST v.1 3. This
probably accounts for the emergence of the new regular past tense of owe in late
Middle English. "Ought," in standard English, has many of the characteristics of
the other modal auxiliaries, notably the lack of inflections and tense
distinction and the absence of the do construction in forming negatives and
interrogatives."

"The main exception to this is the retention of the 'to'-infinitive."

"The construction with bare infinitive arises early in Middle English and
survives to the present day, in modern English especially in non-assertive
contexts (compare NEED v.2 10c), but this has never become standard, perhaps
owing to the influence of the parallel deontic "have to" (see HAVE v. 7c)".


---- I think 'deontic' -- and I was discussing von Wright's recently -- is
perhaps the _right_ word here -- So Greek, 'deon', maybe cognate with Latin
debere.

OED continues:

"In common with must (see MUST v.1 7), the negative that syntactically
modifies 'ought' semantically modifies the following infinitive. The stem vowel
development in the forms is unexplained.]"

In any case, since it's the past-factive of 'owe', what one guess it
literally means:

OLD LADY: "It [sc. the path] doesn't lead a bit in the direction I want to
go"
JEROME: It leads in the direction where you _ought_ to want to go."

With proper replacement along my analysis:

(1) The old lady ought to want to go in direction D

formerly

(2) The lady owed to want to go in direction D

Dropping the 'to' as hypercorrected:

(3) The lady owed want to go in direction D.

We turn that into a present, with the addition of a chronological operator
t1 < t2 (read: 'in the past', 'earlier'):

(4) In t1, the lady owes this: to want to go in direction D.

Since it's something she _owes_, she better comply, I say!

Cheers,

JL

----

From J. K. Jerome, Three men in a bummell:

"In the Grosse Garten in Dresden I once came across an old lady, standing,
helpless and bewildered, in the centre of seven tracks. Each was guarded by a
threatening notice, warning everybody off it but the person for whom it was
intended. “I am sorry to trouble you,” said the old lady, on learning I
could speak English and read German, “but would you mind telling me what I am and
where I HAVE TO go?” I inspected her carefully. I came to the conclusion
that she was a “grown-up” and a “foot-goer,” and *pointed out* her path. She
looked at it, and seemed disappointed. “But I don’t _want_ to go down there,
” she said; “*mayn’t* I go this way?” “Great heavens, no, madam!” I
replied. “That path is reserved for children.” “But I wouldn’t do them any
*harm*,” said the old lady, with a smile. She did not look the sort of old lady
who would have done them any harm. “Madam,” I replied, “if it rested with
me, I would trust you down that path, though my own first-born were at the
other end; but I can only INFORM you of the laws of this country. For you, a
full-grown woman, to venture down that path is to go to certain fine, if not
imprisonment. There is your path, marked plainly —

Nur für Fussgänger

and if you will follow my advice, you will hasten down it; you are NOT
ALLOWED to stand here and hesitate.” “It doesn’t lead a bit in the direction I
*want* to go,” said the old lady.

“It leads in the direction you _ought to_ want to go,” I replied, and we
parted."