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Tue 19 Oct, 2004 01:40 pm
Hi,
I know that conditional sentences formed with would and should , shall and will ( I guess ) , but is there something called past conditional tense ?.If we consider should and would in present conditional tense , this means that the following sentences are the same ,
I would work .
I should work.
but , is this true?
Depends on the context, but taking them at face value the difference is this. In the present tense, would implies willingness. Ex. I would work if I had a job. Or, I would work for you, but you don't pay well enough. Should implies responsibility. Ex. I should work, but I'm tired. Or, I should have gone to the grocery store when I had the chance, now it's too late.
Granted, I'm no English major, and I speak American English.
I'd say the same thing applies in real, sorry, British English.
Re: conditional ( would and should )
navigator wrote:Hi,
I know that conditional sentences formed with would and should , shall and will ( I guess ) , but is there something called past conditional tense ?.
Yes.
present conditional: I would work
past conditional: I would have worked
navigator wrote:If we consider should and would in present conditional tense , this means that the following sentences are the same ,
I would work .
I should work.
but , is this true?
No. "Should" implies an obligation of some sort. Informally, one can substitute "should" for "would," but that wouldn't be technically correct. "Would" is a true conditional: it implies a possibility or a hypothetical situation.
but isn't I would have worked perfect conditional tense
navigator wrote:but isn't I would have worked perfect conditional tense
Modal verbs (or, in the case of "would," modal auxiliary verbs), unlike regular verbs, are not fully conjugable in English. Thus, a regular verb can be conjugated in all tenses:
present: I work
past: I worked
present perfect: I have worked
past perfect: I had worked
whereas a modal verb cannot:
present: I would work
past: I would have worked
present perfect: none (although "I would have worked" might be used)
past perfect: none
For more on forming tenses in conditional statements, see
here.