Re: "neither would be..." ?

taiwandave — Wed, 30 Jun 2004 18:59:39 GMT

Hello, Jessica.

You correctly flagged this sentence as being incorrect:

1. If the mother is not happy, neither would be the child.

The problem with [1] is tense agreement on either side of the comma. The "if" clause is using the present simple, but the "neither" clause uses the past tense of the modal verb "will". It should be:

2. If the mother is not happy, neither will be the child.

Compare:

3. If he goes, I will stay home.
4. If he goes, I would stay home.

[4] is correct only if the speaker is giving advice to someone else (in other words, "If I were you, I would stay home if he goes"). In [2] and [3] the speaker is simply stating that if A is true, B is also true. Hence the use of "will", not "would".

The simplest way of making this point is, as you suggested:

5. If the mother is not happy, the child will not be happy.

Other variants:

6. An unhappy mother means an unhappy child.
7. If the mother is unhappy, so will be the child.

The most concise is at only seven words.

Re: Emphasize

miriam — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 09:07:17 GMT

Of course I don't mind your asking
I don't know what your first language is, but in my country, Spanish speakers find it difficult too to understand that the "s" is necessary to form the simple present of a verb for the 3rd. person singular. The reason is that we associate the addition of an "s" at the end of a word only with plural forms.

In English, most nouns add an "s" to form the plural:
example (singular) --- examples (plural)
Some nouns add "es", and there are several irregular plurals.

Now, the "s" you may add to the word "mean" is not the same "s" that you add to a nounn in order to from the plural.
You intended to use the verb "mean" in the simple present in your post. Now, the rule for forming the present simple of verbs in English is the following:
You use the base form of the verb (that is, the infinitive, the verb as it appears in a dictionary entry) for all the persons but the third person singular, for which you have to add an "s" (or "es") to the verb. To form the negative and the interrogative, you need the auxiliary "do" for all persons except the third person singular, which uses "does".
The exceptions to this rule are the verb "to be", which is the most irregular of the English verbs, and the modal verbs (can, could, may, might, should, will, would, etc).
The verb "mean" in the simple present would be:
I mean
you mean
he, she, it means
we mean
you mean
they mean

In the case of verbs, the addition of the "s" does not mean pluralisation.

Other examples of the simple present:

"I go to school."
"He goes to school."

"My sister and I like icecream."
"Susan likes icecream."

"I speak English."
"You speak English."
"She speaks English."
"The boys speak English."
"We all speak English."

"The word 'easy' means 'not difficult'."
"What does this word mean?"
"What do these words mean?"

Let me know if you still find it confusing?

Search results for 'tag:Present simple tag:Modal verbs' matching tags 'Present simple' and 'Modal verbs'

Re: "neither would be..." ?

Re: Emphasize