Sentences which sound very strange, but are OK

Hi again,

In the last days I came across a few sentences that sound as if they were grammatically wrong, but as they are written in books or said by reputable native speakers I know that they should be ok.

One of that sentences was said by George Bush and published by CNN a few days ago, but unfortunately I can´t find it right now, which is a shame because it was the weirdest one. He was talking about the Washington sniper.

At this point you must be waiting for an example sentence, so here it goes:

"You need not be held back by the past."

This one is from the book "Managing Your Mind", published by Oxford University Press, and even my girlfriend who lived in Canada for two years finds it unpleasant, like if it was wrong.

As usual, please send your comments.

Regards from Montevideo, Uruguay.
Marcelo

PS: Poland will enter the EU in 2004 !

> "You need not be held back by the past."

I guess the "weird thing" would be the use of "need" as a modal verb.
The more natural way would probably be "You don't need to be held back by the past."

Tom, thank you very much for your prompt answer, now I understand the structure of that sentence, it seems that sometimes it is necessary to study grammar, but just for advanced topics.

I found this interesting web page about this subject: http://www.englishpage.com/modals/modalintro.html

I can assure you that as a native-English speaker the sentence "You need not be held back by the past" sounds fine to me. One does not hear that construction very frequently. I agree with Marcelo that it is necessary to study grammar at an advanced level. Maybe it is important for us to differentiate between language acquisition for language learners in general and the study of grammar at an advanced level in order to polish our language skills. Many native speakers of English make a lot of grammatical mistakes when they write. Perhaps this is because modern theories of language acquisition which have been adopted by the education systems of many English-speaking countries fail to differentiate between the acquisition of functional fluency and the refinement of already advanced linguistic skills. It might also simply be due to low educational standards. Although I have spent a total of eighteen years studying at English-speaking educational institutions, I feel that almost everything I ever learned about grammar was learned by studying foreign languages or by doing self-study. Feel free to comment.

"You need not be held back by the past."

Why do you think it's weird? I've seen the "need as a modal verb" used by native speakers many times - usually in written English. Moreover, if you consult grammar books, I believe they will tell you that the sentence is 100% grammatically correct.

Perhaps it's unnatural in spoken English. But I think it's okay in a formal style.

This is an archaic form of making negative sentences. A long time age English people would always put "not" following the verb e.g. I love her not. It must be a leftover from that era.

It sounds fine to me but in conversation I'd usually tend more towards something like "You don't have to let the past hold you back."

P.S. I wouldn't put much faith in George Bush (nor his son George Dubya) for anything particularly for his aptitude at English.