Questions as mayn’t you have done or mustn’t you have done might impress unfavorably in American, as superfluous or even incorrect. The preference is for patterns without syntactic HAVE, and we can try to explain this with human logic.
54. *MAYN’T you HAVE worked a lot?
54a. *NEEDN’T you HAVE worked a lot?
54b. *MUSTN’T you HAVE worked a lot?
Please compare,
55. DIDN’T you NEED / HAVE TO work a lot?
Asking questions always involves making a theory. Unless we ask a question for no reason or purpose and expect no answer at all — that is, we just dilly-dally to ask — we think about some PROBABILITY at least.
Natural language has economy. It does not like to use the same extents of language logic multiple times.
For the Affirmative, Modal phrases can work with three extents: Map Real Time, Modality, and Ancillary or Anchor.
Ancillary
I may have seen the movie, but I have never been there.
(We saw the movie.)
Anchor
I may have seen the movie. I am not sure. (We possibly saw it, but maybe not.)
Questions as mayn’t you have done or mustn’t you have done would mark theory multiple times, with the Modal Interrogative and potential ancillary time.
With the Interrogative, Map Real Time and Modality are enough to express CONTINGENCY.
People likely do not presume on the extent or anchor, asking what there needs or must be.
55. DIDN’T you NEED / HAVE TO work a lot?
(NEED and HAVE TO are regular verb forms sometimes, but in grammar books they are mostly presented in chapters for Modality.)
Let us compare the Modal CAN.
56. COULDN’T you HAVE worked away?
The Modal CAN narrates about ability that there is. Only circumstance might limit ability in extent, and we have the phrase to be able to.
56a. WEREN’T you ABLE to work?
We may now compare the PRESENT Interrogative for all Modals we have analyzed so far.
57. We CAN work a lot.
CAN we work a lot?
58. We MAY work a lot.
MAY we work a lot?
59. We SHALL work a lot.
SHALL we work a lot?
60. We WILL work a lot.
WILL we work a lot?
61. We SHOULD work a lot.
SHOULD we work a lot?
62. We MUST work a lot.
MUST we work a lot?
63. We OUGHT TO work a lot.
OUGHT we TO work a lot?
We may compare the Negative short shape. The short comes from the way the language has been spoken.
64. We CANNOT | CAN’T skip work.
65. We MAY NOT | MAYN’T skip work.
66. We SHALL NOT | SHAN’T skip work.
67. We WILL NOT | WON’T skip work.
68. We SHOULD NOT | SHOULDN’T skip work.
69. We MUST NOT | MUSTN’T skip work.
70. We OUGHT NOT | OUGHTN’T TO skip work.
The Modal CAN attracts the particle NOT directly. They become one word, CANNOT. We may come upon the shape CAN NOT in historic texts, as the ■Gettysburg Address.
President Abraham Lincoln gave the speech at the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1863. The shape “can not” is hardly used today, and we are going to make a better-learned impression, staying with the standard cannot.
MUST NOT usually implies that something is forbidden or strongly discommended. NEED can take on the regular negative. The auxiliary is the verb to do.
71. We DO NOT NEED to memorize dictionaries.
We can use the short form, DON’T, when our contexts are not formal.
71a. We DON’T NEED to memorize dictionaries.
NEED can take on Modal negation, too. The Modal form may be more emphatic.
71b. We NEEDN’T memorize dictionaries.
(There is definitely no need to memorize dictionaries.)
Our paths may diverge, for NEED and the auxiliary PAST.
72. You DIDN’T NEED to do this.
(Something didn’t need to be done and it was not done.)
72a. You NEEDN’T HAVE done this.
(You did it, but the claim is you COULD HAVE left it alone.)
HAVE TO takes the regular negative.
73. We DO NOT HAVE TO memorize dictionaries.
73a. We DON’T HAVE TO memorize dictionaries.
Inversion patterns for the Negative Interrogative will depend on the form we use, short or full.
74. CAN we NOT work a lot?
74a. CAN’T we work a lot?
75. MAY we NOT work a lot?
75a. MAYN’T we work a lot?
76. SHALL we NOT work a lot?
76a. SHAN’T we work a lot?
77. WILL we NOT work a lot?
77a. WON’T we work a lot?
78. SHOULD we NOT work a lot?
78a. SHOULDN’T we work a lot?
79. MUST we NOT work a lot?
79a. MUSTN’T we work a lot?
80. OUGHT we NOT TO work a lot?
80a. OUGHTN’T we TO work a lot?
The pattern,
MUST we NOT | MUSTN’T we,
asks about the proper course of things, not about permission.
The pattern, OUGHT we NOT | OUGHTN’T we, becomes used without the infinitive more and more: again, we may think about theory making and logical extents, for the language economy.
HAVE TO takes the regular Negative Interrogative.
81. DO we NOT HAVE TO work a lot?
81a. DON’T we HAVE TO work a lot?