1-- With no further context it is present, the polite form in common use. The past habitual is possible but much less common. 2-- Past habitual... unless it is in a conditional sentence. Supplying short clauses out of context is of questionable

Unreal tenses use the past tense for present situations and the past perfect for past situations. For example: "I would rather we had never met" =past perfect for past time "I would rather you smoked outside." =

"You could write that letter yesterday" shows an ability in the past. So, there's a big chance that the person already wrote that letter yesterday. "You could have written that letter yesterday" tell us that the person was

Thanks for the reply, CJ. Could you please give me a couple of sentence examples to show me the different ways modals express their time/tense --since I was told usually time adverbials in the sentence do this.

"Would" is a modal and modals take the bare infinitive after them. You are misreading the sentence if you interpret "climb" and "stare" as present tense -- they are bare infinitives.

1) Modal tenses (modal + bare infinitive) can express different times, but not tenses--is that correct? Yes, I would say so. 2) Also, if they can express different times, how is one to know what time it refers to in a particular sentence? Your

1) How is it functioning below (I've asked this elsewhere and received no consistent answer)? Having found me to be an alcoholic, she did not like me and so spurned my offer. But I would attempt to warm up to her . It functions as the

so there is no difference in structure or tense to convey what you're talking about; The difference is only that the speaker knows what happens (even though the tense of the sentence is past tense) Right. CJ

The speaker already knows the outcome of the past situation. It's a sort of omniscient present point of view. If I already know the whole story and what eventually happened, I can "place myself in the present" when I talk about

Are you talking about the third sentence of mine; that is, do you mean 'herself'? No. I'm talking about the speaker of any such sentence. And how has the speaker placed himself in the present? The speaker already knows the outcome of