Here's a sentence I made up:
"He seemed to had not understood what I had said to him"
Is this sentence correct? I tried searching for similar sentences by putting quotation marks around 'seemed to had not', and out popped roughly 5-6 results, but that doesn't seem to be that many, especially because some of those could've been mistakes, and I couldn't find any questions like this.
Also, assuming it is correct, if I change the position of 'not', like so:
"He seemed to not had understood what I had said to him"
Would it still be grammatical?
Best Answer
No matter where you put the "not", a statement with "to had" isn't grammatical. The construction you are using is "seem" + to-infinitive. The infinitive for the verb have/had is "to have", not "to had."
This is discussed in detail on the BBC "Learning English" website:
So what you should say is either of:
He seemed not to have understood what I had said to him.
He seemed to have not understood what I had said to him.
He seemed to not have understood what I had said to him.
The "not" could really go in any of those 3 places, but the first possibility sounds smoother and more idiomatic. The last sentence sounds the least natural to me, even slightly awkward.