Does the falseness of the statement "John used to smoke" imply that John smokes nowadays? Hi! I would be happy if you could help me with this issue, it bugs me a lot... We had a task in my English cl

Evgeniia

Does the falseness of the statement "John used to smoke" imply that John smokes nowadays? Hi! I would be happy if you could help me with this issue, it bugs me a lot... We had a task in my English classes: to write 3 sentences with the structure "used to do sth" with one of them being false. We needed to ask our classmates (walking around) and try to guess wich one is the false. My false statement was "I used to play violin". After guessing the right answer my groupmate asked whether I played violin nowadays because the falseness of my statement automatically implied that. Is it true?. That groupmate is a mathematician, by the way. Thank you!

Jun 13, 2017 7:40 PM

Answers · 13

Not quite sure what them being a mathematician has to do with anything... I guess you're trying to imply they're clever. OK, so you said you used to play the violin. Your statement does not automatically imply you still play it. There are two ways to interpret that, knowing the statement is false. 1) Your 'fact' had some basis in truth and you still play the violin. 2) You simply made up a fact, you never played the violin at all and what you said has nothing to do with what you actually do in your spare time. The person didn't seem to consider that number 2 was possible.

June 13, 2017

"Used to" implies a chance in habits. "John used to smoke" implies that John no longer smokes now. The negative (not "false"): "John didn't use to smoke" implies that John smokes now. To me, your classmate's hunch makes sense, but as Su.Ki says, it's hard to relate that in-class exercise to a real world situation.

June 14, 2017

'John used to smoke' by itself implies he no longer smokes currently. Whether it is true or false relies on the honesty of the person saying it.

June 13, 2017

Not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. In the real world, you would generally only ask the question about whether or not John used to smoke if you know that he doesn't smoke now. For example: "I heard that John used to smoke." "No, that's not true at all. I've known John all my life, and I know for a fact that he's never smoked."

June 13, 2017