In Modals^x

I obviously agree with Forbes: it depends on your first language. I have never had any problems with passive sentences, subjects and objects, the difference between countable and uncountable, etc. because those are all features I have in Italian too. It is not difficult at all for me to use...

These terms may not be the same everywhere but the basic grammar of the language is the same all over the Anglo-Saxon world! Would have had completed is always wrong. Would is a defective/modal auxiliary and only an infinitive is possible after these auxiliaries. In this case the perfect...

Hi,1. Mr. M wrote this sentence as a response in a thread named "Please correct the sentence." Why no hyphen is needed for the phrase "call forwarding" as I can tell from his sentence?One reason I can think of is that they are so often used in pairs, to use them separately...

Hi there,I've got a text excerpt here and I'm wondering whether the modal "must" has epistemic or deontic meaning. What do you think? (it's from the end of the 17th century)For understanding of this, let us suppose the quadrat space E, to be filled with a piece of Lead or...

Hi,1. Does this modal "would" denote past-ness or present-ness(I don't know these 'ness' words are correct or acceptable words)? I think the time frame is in the present, not in the past.I gave him my word that it would never happen again. It means it would never happen...

Hi,1. Does this modal "would" denote past-ness or present-ness(I don't know these 'ness' words are correct or acceptable words)? I think the time frame is in the present, not in the past.I gave him my word that it would never happen again.2. Please take a look at two pair...

Hi,Here goes the long story... Yesterday, I was talking with a girl from England who's been living here for nearly a year. She told me she was looking for an organization to join here, and on the basis of her background and beliefs I suggested she should join an Italian organization against...

Thank you so much. This is your response in a thread named "conditional."You said:You have another post on nearly the same subject. See my answer there. They are mixed conditionals, and they are very awkward. If I am not mistaken, you seem to have said the examples given there are...

I too agree with Cool Breeze. However, I think that the phrase "this past summer" is awkward and it should be "past summer" or "this summer".

The conditional is indeed often used in many languages to translate could. Without context, which is often required to make an English sentence exact, the first sentence could be a complaint about something that didn't happen. In other words, someone didn't go to Japan even though the...