After getting an answer to this question I came across this article which states (without giving an alternative) that you can't say:
1.「歌い もしない」- "Can't even sing"
2.「書き もしない」- "Can't even write"
The reason given is that you can't form a noun out of 「歌う」and 「書く」this way.
If this is the case then how can one say "Can't even sing\write"?
As a side note I find it ironic that I can't even write "I can't even write".
Thanks!
The article doesn’t say you can’t say 歌いもしない and 書きもしない. You can. It says you can’t take out the ます-stem of any verb and take it as a noun. You read it the way you did because you assume anything that comes before any particle must be a noun.
書きもしない is a valid form that means someone doesn’t even write (something). There is no sense of potentiality in it. To add it, you have roughly two options.
One is to turn the verb into its potential form and put it in the [V ます-stem]-もしない pattern.
書けもしない
Alternatively, you can first turn the verb into a noun phrase with こと and make it the object (or grammatical subject) of できる.
書くこともできない
