Word
Ich habe nicht ins Kino gehen dürfen, sondern habe stattdessen die Hausarbeit machen müssen.
Meaning
I was not allowed to go to the cinema, but had to do the housework instead.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Ich habe nicht ins Kino gehen dürfen, sondern habe stattdessen die Hausarbeit machen müssen.
ich
I
machen
to make, to do
in
in
haben
to have
Questions & Answers about Ich habe nicht ins Kino gehen dürfen, sondern habe stattdessen die Hausarbeit machen müssen.
Why does this sentence use dürfen and müssen instead of their past participles gedurft and gemusst?
This is the double infinitive rule. When a modal verb is used together with another main verb (like gehen or machen) in the Perfekt tense, the modal verb keeps its infinitive form instead of changing to a past participle.
What is the correct word order for the two verbs at the end of each clause?
In a double infinitive construction, the main action verb comes first, followed by the modal verb. That is why we say gehen dürfen and machen müssen, with the modal verb landing at the absolute end of the clause.
Why is sondern used here instead of aber to mean but?
You must use sondern when you are directly contradicting a negative statement with a positive replacement. Because the first half of the sentence says you were not allowed to do something (nicht), the alternative action requires sondern.
Why isn't the subject ich repeated after sondern?
Because sondern connects two equal main clauses, and the subject is the exact same for both, you can drop the second ich. Saying sondern ich habe stattdessen... is also grammatically correct, but leaving it out flows better and sounds more natural.