In Tenses^x, Modals^x

In the early Church, Christians would celebrate the anniversary of a martyr's death for Christ (known as the saint's "birth day") by serving an All-Night Vigil, and then celebrating the Eucharist over their tomb or place of martyrdom. In the fourth century, neighbouring dioceses began to transfer...

Google counts, if you trust them: he isn't 2,240,000 he's not 1,910,000 I would not consider this a significant difference. I imagine the others that use the present tense of to be are about the same proportionally. With modal verbs, however, the cases where the word not is isolated...

Neeraj Jain wrote:Hi Maris, If I have just one sentence: I could play tennis well. can it be used to refer to the present tense?Strictly speaking, only to conditional future (or past, of course). See my examples above. Some see that as kind of a present.

Hi Maris, If I have just one sentence: I could play tennis well. can it be used to refer to the present tense?

Anonymous wrote:the first one is the one marked "1" with a modal 'would' that expresses an event in the past, encompassing an event before an event also; and the second marking point is the one marked "2" and with the past perfect tense 'had lined up'.There is no switch in tense there. They are...

Thank you, CalifJim. I was looking at the Arkansas Weekly that is online and in it, an article under the name of "All Over the Map" written by Bob Grace, dated March 7, 2007, I saw this writing. ... It was all I could do but watch and pray for this not to happen. Sure enough, right before the...

CalifJim wrote:After "mental" verbs in the past tense use the past tense or the past of a modal verb (e.g., would, might, could) I late. CJ As I have said, I would also use the past tense here, but I wasn't sure about the possibility of using the present tense. And then I came across...

Wouldn't you say there are twelve tenses? Simple , Progressive, Perfect, Perfect Progressive - each with past, present, and future tenses - for a total of twelve? What is the difference between, for example, Future Perfect in the past and Future Perfect? Is it just the modal auxilary "would"...

After "mental" verbs in the past tense use the past tense or the past of a modal verb (e.g., would, might, could) I late. CJ

Need sometimes behaves like a modal, for example 'She need know', 'She needn't know', or, in more formal English, 'She need not know'.Palmer (The English Verb) says, "The modal forms are available only with ... negation and interrogation." So She need know is not possible. It has to be She...