grammaticality - "He has to do it. Hasn't he (to)?"



He has to do it. Hasn't he (to)?



Is the 'to' correct/ incorrect/ unnecessary?


Is that a case of an infinitive in interrogative tail (question tag)?



Answer



Have to is an idiom, a paraphrase of the modal auxiliary verb must; it's always pronounced /'hæftə/ (/'hæstə/ in 3SgPres -- always /f/ instead of /v/ and /s/ instead of /z/), and it can't be split up.


Modal paraphrase idioms like hafta, wanna, gotta, etc. are written with to in formal spelling, but that's just a marker for the infinitive that has to follow hasta, and it also has to be all in one unit. You can't say, for instance,



  • *Last night I had three times to get up and go to the bathroom.


instead of



  • Last night I had to get up and go to the bathroom three times.


because it splits up had and to. You can't even contract a negative with it



  • *She hasn't to go to work today; it's a holiday.


is ungrammatical, while



  • She doesn't have to go to work today; it's a holiday.


with Do-Support, is grammatical.


That's why it doesn't form a normal tag question; the tag requires a contracted negative, and that's ungrammatical. Instead, as Rory, Kris, and Noah all suggest, using do/does/did of Do-Support is the correct solution.


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