By Constructions, Modals

Alienvoord, I appreciate you're constructive criticism. Allow me to rebute:1) Comprehensible, yes. But many expressions are comprehensible even without being gramatically sound. The nuances I try to reveal in this post are to help you write better gramatically, not to sound or to write...

Children are quite good at throwing themselves into that future time and already imagining the distress they will feel when it's time to go home, which makes this construction natural for them. Aside from saying "we won't" instead of "I shall not" it's something they have said, more or less....

I agree. First person accounts have to be treated differently from third person accounts. If I was to do something, I know whether I did it or not. If someone else was to do something or something was to happen, I don't have any privileged first-person knowledge about it to rely on. Take...

I am not aware of any name that is used for a construction with a modal verb like "would". I don't believe that in traditional grammar this is called a tense. It is a verbal construction with a modal verb. "shall" and "will" are exceptions. Verbal constructions with these modals are...

I too will choose (A). As Kilimanjaro stated, the constructions "so/as+a+noun" are now of rare use but they are still grammatical at least in written English. (A) Siberia was as remote a place as Russians could think of for exiles. =Siberia was as remote as Russians could think of...

Anonymous wrote:I have seen similar putative sentences. "I am suprised that he should feel lonely."(1) "I am suprised that he feels lonely." I don't remember the exact sentences in Quirk's "A Comprehensive English Grammar". I wonder if the first sentence can be written as "I will be suprised...

CalifJim wrote:If a student points to some construction and asks me if it's the subjunctive or not, I can't reply, 'No, it's a monkey!'Now there you are wrong! You are the teacher and can say any dang thing you want! In fact a smart retort like that might go a long way toward making your...

Thanks for your reply, MrP. 1. I would call it an exclamatory conditional. The main clause is left unspoken, but we can usually infer it, e.g. "if only she would contact me, I would be very happy". Ok, it’s a conditional with an unexpressed result but still a ‘conditional’ right? In this case,...

1. 'If only she would contact me'. This sentence uses 'if' but there's only one clause so what type of sentence is this? You wouldn't call it a conditional, would you? 2. The above sentence is about a wish and therefore we don't use 'will'. Also, in other such sentences we use the simple past to...

When we talk about a subjunctive construction, I think it is easier to understand it without the 'inserted clause, I would think' becasue that way one can clearly see the cause-and-effect relationship beteween the conditional clause and the main clasue. 1. If someone tells you that you may...