placement of adverb "never"

[rte.sushil]

Sentence: My friend said he never remembered having read a more enjoyable look.

a.) My friend said he never remembered having read a more enjoyable look.
b.) My friend said he remembered never having read a more enjoyable look.
c.) My friend said he remembered having never read a more enjoyable look.


correct answer : C

According to "wren and martin" book, a.) is wrong because never is misplaced. The correct version for a.) would be : My friend said he didn't remembered ever having read a more enjoyable look.

I am struggling with b.) and c.)
As per another rule of grammer,"never" is normally put between the subject and the verb if the verb consists of only word(without helping/auxiliary verb) as in example: his wife never cooks. so after reading this i was confused with A also and totally lost to find out the reason why c.) is correct over a.) and b.).

Please help!!

[Willy]

The correct version for a.) would be : My friend said he didn't remembered ever having read a more enjoyable look.

I don't think this construction is correct. 'Didn't' and 'remembered' won't go together, and I believe 'remembered' must be 'remember'. Also, I believe it is not 'look' but 'book', otherwise sentence sounds funny. :)

I believe, the difference between B and C is that NEVER (adverb) is placed correctly next to READ (verb). 'Never' is meant to modify 'Read' not to 'remembered' or 'having'. Also, see the meaning is also changed when we change the position of 'never' in this sentence.

P.S. -- Wren and Martin is good book, no doubt, but I believe we really need not to go through this book as it contains hell lots of things that we need not to know for GMAT. MGMAT SC book is more than enough!! :)

[rte.sushil]

The correct version for a.) would be : My friend said he didn't remembered ever having read a more enjoyable look.

I don't think this construction is correct. 'Didn't' and 'remembered' won't go together, and I believe 'remembered' must be 'remember'. Also, I believe it is not 'look' but 'book', otherwise sentence sounds funny. :)

Sorry for such a silly mistake. For other readers, please read as :-
Sentence: My friend said he never remembered having read a more enjoyable book.

a.) My friend said he never remembered having read a more enjoyable book.
b.) My friend said he remembered never having read a more enjoyable book.
c.) My friend said he remembered having never read a more enjoyable book.


correct answer : C

[tim]

i'm not entirely sure what evidence we have that ANY of these is correct..