Yet if she could have seen me there, she would have been a little puzzled. What verb form is "could have seen" in this sentence? Personally, I would just call it a "modal perfect" (with could ). I use that term for any modal

Ellisa: This is a very long passage, and your other post seems to be even longer. The editor at this web site makes it difficult to make corrections to long passages. Also, many teachers do not want to devote a long time working on a single post.

Thank you very much Grammar Geek,but to be frank ,I'm still confused aout the use of' Would' here.Can we use WILL instead of WOULD in #1 ?and why don't they use WILL in # 2?Similarly your sentence is " If the candidate has

CJ, how about "I could be wrong" and "It could be anything"? There are not a form of past tense, right? It's about possibility. "a form of the past tense" doesn't make sense to me. There is only one form of

Inchoateknowledge wrote: What does (simple) future tense mean in this sentence? The grammarian (it is a grammarian, isn't it?) you're quoting would probably tell you that there is no future tense. Many linguists claim English has only two

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

: When he returns to Manhattan 1000 years later, it has been destroyed and rebuilt three times. 2

She said (that) she couldn't come to the door because she was just washing her hair. Paco: This one is correct. "Could" can be taken either as a past tense modal or as a present tense modal, depending on the context. In this case one might

I am confused by the difference of these sentences. A:If you finish the homework, you could go out with me. B:If you finished the homework, you could go out with me. Are they correct in grammar? If so, would you please tell me the

CGEL: Conversion to indirect reported speech not a matter of grammatical rule There is a second respect in which we must beware of being misled by the traditonal account associating backshift with indirect reported speech. Converting into