By Past tenses, Conditionals

Re: tense

Hi, Hi, Why is it that in the situation below, 'would' has to go with 'spent' and 'will' with 'has spent"? I know 'would' is used in the sense of indicating past actions but 'would' is also used for indicating conditional intention. He spent...

Re: Modals in conditional sentences

The answer is here: Typically, when the accompanying clause is an "if" clause, the historical present tense forms go with present tense verbs, and historical past tense forms go with past tense verbs. However, "could" and "might", meaning "may"...

Re: was/were conditional sentence

The position of the condition within the sentence is irrelevant to the was/were issue. If I were not sure, I would not tell you this.I would not tell you this if I were not sure.The problem is that the was > were change only applies to the main verb of the condition clause. Any other...

Re: Condtitional tense

Hi AvangiTo me, the word 'if' is used like 'whenever' in your sentence, and the word 'will' is used to indicate a habitual or repeated action (i.e. in that sentence, you are saying it is not your habit to wonder about things such as closed doors while you are on vacation)....

Re: Would you mind if I "opened" the window?

Your sentence is type 2 conditional sentence. Hence the if-clause is in the past tense and the main verb is in the 'conditional' tense. However, the past tense in this is not a real past tense, it is a subjunctive. Therefore, this refers to present or future time. If you use...

Re: may/might

.1. It may rain, you'd better take a coat. I was thinking about "might" in this sentence?-- Might is OK too. 2. He said that it might rain. In contrast to the previous sentence, this time "may" changed into "might"?-- Yes 3. He said that we might use his...

Re: english grammar

but sometimes in the If part of the sentence past tense is used in these type of conditional sentences.

Re: Is this really right? <grammar question>

Anonymous wrote:‘If you looked in the past, you would have noticed amazing things.’ My text says this is correct. But should it not be "If you HAD looked in the past, you would have noticed amazing things." Why or why not? Your question indicates that you found the invalidity of the use of...

Re: Sequence of tenses (#4)

Belly wrote:But will that violate the conditional structure? Not really! We use conditional statements to express propability. Here is a quick summary: 1. If the certainty is 100% (time independent), use present tense If you don’t eat, you get hungry. ...

Re: Was or Were?

Hi,I think it's definitley "was". The other, "were", doesn't make sense there. There are no conditionals, so it's just a past tense. And it agrees with "it" because that's the way "it's/it was" is used idiomatically:It's John who decided to go.It's my parents who decided to go.It was Jenny who...