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what is the term for the style, or voice, that would use 'would' for the past tense? e.g., "The second half of the game would be defined by..."
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Well, I'd call it the conditional mood ( link).
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In the following case, "would" is used to express the past, but it doesn't seem conditional to me:
"Our parents would take us to see relatives on Sunday."
What am I missing?
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Seems to me in tsuwm's example he is using it in a past narrative where the narrative has not yet reached a point that is, for us, also in the past. A conditional mood would be something like "I would help you if I knew what you were looking for."
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yes, there's no actual 'condition' involved in my example; i.e., no if statement.
here's an entire example (please forgive/ignore the sport context - it happens to be where I see a lot of this):
“The second half of the game would be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play. In the third quarter, the Lakers, making their push to try and win this game early, would eventually extend their lead to 15, but Phoenix would show their determination to not go quietly and went on their own run. The Suns took advantage of some sloppy Lakers play and raced the floor for easy baskets. By the time the third quarter was over, Phoenix would cut the Lakers lead to four and I think all Lakers fans were prepared for another close game that could come down to the final possession. And while this game wouldn’t be that close. . . “
this all happened in the past, of course. : )
it all seems a bit.. contrived to me, esp. for a sports blog. (and another thing - it's not consistently used.)
Last edited by tsuwm; 03/13/2010 11:53 PM.
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Another seldom-used construction with "would" is very much conditional, but the mood is indicated more by the subjunctive (I think) of the main verb:
"I would that she were here now."
There's an implied "if" in this case, since it's clear she is not here now. The "would" injects wishfulness, but it's hard for me to see where it contributes to the conditional mood of the sentence, which is established by "were."
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Nothing... "would" has more than one use.
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Beck's latest reminds me that the origin of would is as the past tense of will; will not as a periphrastic future marker but will meaning 'desire'. This, however, would reinforce my claim that would in the original question was indicating that it was being used in a historical future sense.
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Is would used as a replacement for used to? If so, used to is firmly in the past. (Not in the original question. That appears to be a - present continuous tense in the past!)
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It seems more like a future tense, expressed as past events:
"After having lost their first two matches, they would go on to win in the finals."
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Nothing... "would" has more than one use. Certainly it does, but in reading the quote at the start of this thread, I didn't see why "would" was considered conditional by one of the respondents. I still believe it does not create a conditional mood in that particular construction.
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well yeah, that was, in fact, my original question. is there a term for this "mood" or style?
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Is would used as a replacement for used to? - In my opinion, you are closest to the "truth". So what is the grammatical term for the formulation with "used to"? Habitual tense? - Yet it is still not a 1:1 replacement. In a narrative, you can write "would" repeatedly, while "used to" sounds clumsy if repeated. In Tsuwm's example it seems overdone and possibly wrong: was the course of the game really identical on several occasions?
Last edited by wsieber; 03/14/2010 2:29 PM.
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Sorry about that, folks. I was tired and a bit in a hurry when I posted without really looking at the sample sentence all that hard. It is not the conditional mood at all, as you have all pointed out. Just wish I'd caught it sooner.
Well, the voice of the example is passive. As others have suggested it seems to be a kind of historical future. A future tense expressed within the context of the past. The mood is just plain indicative as there is nothing in doubt about the event (the definition) occurring.
Again sorry for the noise caused by my earlier confusion.
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Strange. I wanted to see more context so I googled up the article the sentence fragment occurred in ( link). The paragraph which is opened by the example sentence reads just a little bit strange to me, perhaps because would is often used in conditional sentences. If you rewrite the paragraph: The second half of the game would be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play. In the third quarter, the Lakers, making their push to try and win this game early, would eventually extend their lead to 15, but Phoenix would show their determination to not go quietly and went on their own run. The Suns took advantage of some sloppy Lakers play and raced the floor for easy baskets. By the time the third quarter was over, Phoenix would cut the Lakers lead to four and I think all Lakers fans were prepared for another close game that could come down to the final possession. And while this game wouldn’t be that close, there were moments of anxiety as the Suns kept it close and battled the Lakers hard by contesting shots in the paint and, though overmatched physically, not giving an inch.
The second half of the game was defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play. In the third quarter, the Lakers, having made their push to try and win this game early, eventually extended their lead to 15, but Phoenix showed their determination to not go quietly and went on their own run. The Suns took advantage of some sloppy Lakers play and raced the floor for easy baskets. By the time the third quarter was over, Phoenix cut the Lakers lead to four, and I think all Lakers fans were prepared for another close game that would come down to the final possession. And while this game wasn't that close, there were moments of anxiety as the Suns kept it close and battled the Lakers hard by contesting shots in the paint and, though overmatched physically, not giving an inch. I don't think anything was lost by rewriting all these woulds into simple past tenses and making the one odd could into a would.
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wiki[conditional mood] would turn out to be extremely unhelpful, "Conditional verb forms can also have temporal uses, often for expressing "future in the past" tense."
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"Conditional verb forms can also have temporal uses, often for expressing "future in the past" tense."Well, thanks. You learn something new everyday. I had never heard of the future in the past, but it does occur ( link). I wonder when the term was coined?
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@ zjm changing the woulds - I think a sports buff would say you do not get the feeling of live action it is too much a reportage over and done with.
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my reason for stating that wiki was "unhelpful" with this statement is that the statement stands on its own and is not really related to the "conditional" aspect!
I guess that this "style" was just contrived by someone who was bored with the indicative mood.
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I found an explanation online (the link may not work outside of the States). Relative tenses represent deictic tenses in relation to other deictic tenses. (In McCawley 1971: 91, and Hornstein 1981: 120, the relation in question is syntactic subordination: in what McCoard (1978) calls the "embedded past" theory of the perfect, the present perfect derives from a past tense embedded under a present tense.) Thus had sung is the past-in-the-past, has sung the past-in-the-present, and will have sung the past-in-the-future. Similarly would sing is the future-in-the-past, is (about) to sing the future-in-the-present, and will be (about) to sing the future-in-the-future. Coincident (relatively present) tenses are ignored by many contemporary theorists, though Lo Cascio (1982: 42) writes of the imperfect, which is considered in traditional grammar a present-in-the-past, as a past coincident tense. ( link)
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my reason for stating that wiki was "unhelpful" with this statement is that the statement stands on its own and is not really related to the "conditional" aspect!
I think what the article was saying is that the conditional mood in English has been overloaded with a tense usage. I don't really see what value-added using the future-in-the-past gets you in the paragraph quoted above. And when reading it, the conditional was always lurking on the periphery of my consciousness. "The second half of the game would have been defined by ..., if it hadn't been for that UFO landing in the middle of downtown LA."
I guess that this "style" was just contrived by someone who was bored with the indicative mood.
Well, the tense exists. I was just questioning its use in that paragraph. For me, putting the future in the past does nothing but make for longer sentences.
[Addendum: I have been reading up on the future-in-the-past and find that it occurs in the Romance languages as well, where the conditional mood of the auxiliary 'to be' (in the present tense) is used with the past participle, e.g., in Italian La settimana scorsa, Maria mi ha informato che Paolo sarebbe tornato il giorno dopo ("Last week, Maria informed me that Paolo would return the day after").]
Last edited by zmjezhd; 03/14/2010 4:07 PM.
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I guess that this "style" was just contrived by someone who was bored with the indicative mood.
... Or wanted to achieve live action in what is basically reportage. While writing there is sometimes a strange need to avoid the simple past. I have experienced it and then over come it, because, yes, longer sentences and ..... untidy language.
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Last week, Maria informed me that Paolo would return the day after - sorry, but this use of would doesn't correspond to the one in tsuwm's example - because here, you have a dependent sentence referring to a different time. This is a clear case of "future in the past", contrary to the sports text.
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you have a dependent sentence referring to a different time. This is a clear case of "future in the past", contrary to the sports text.
So, what is the verb form, in the sports quote, called? And what is the sports text if not future-in-the-past?
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past-in-the-future?
-joe (tongue-in-the-cheek) friday
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The second half of the game would be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play.
The second half of the game could be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play.
The second half of the game should be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play.
The second half of the game can be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play.
Which one would you choose if you could and what tense will it be?
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Bran, if you ask me (and you did), those choices can all be interpreted in slightly different ways: The second half of the game would be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play.This is the 'original', and seems to be best described by future-in-the-past tense - it states how things played out. The second half of the game could be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play.This is another way of saying "the second half might be defined by..." - conditional? The second half of the game should be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play.opinionated.  (or, actual future/predictive) The second half of the game can be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play. see #2. I guess I would recast it somewhat like jheem has done; simpler and clearer. options 2, 3 and 4 change the voice, I think.
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Thanks, I like the explanation and will go puzzling no less when I'll have to make choices. These auxiliary verbs shall, will, may and can; also must, have to and should are the most difficult part of English grammar to me.
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options 2, 3 and 4 change the voice, I think.
No, the voice remains passive, but the mood changes. Here are two sentences that illustrate the active versus the passive voice:
1. I read newspapers.
2. Newspapers are read (by me).
Both are present tense and indicative mood. The modal verbs (aka auxiliary verbs) in English a rather complicated little things, e.g., can implies ability (but nowadays it's often used in a permissive sense, like may). Historically, these verbs were from a different class of verbs in Germanic called preterite-present. They main trait is they exist only in present and past forms, and they do not distinguish between third person singular present and the other persons and numbers, i.e., I may, *I shall may, I can, he can, I read, he reads. Most of our traditional grammar terms come from the Graeco-Latin grammatical tradition. A big difference between Latin and English is that we have very little verbal inflectional morphology left and most of our verbal conjugations are done periphrastically.
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There's probably enough 2 centses in here already, but I throw in 2 more: in Spanish, the idea of "used to" is expressed in the imperfect tense, a past tense form. I'd be interested to know why it's called "imperfect".
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These auxiliary verbs shall, will, may and can; also must, have to and should are the most difficult part of English grammar to me
From what I've seen of Dutch grammar, you've got some complicated verbal paradigms, too. For example, the modal particles dan, eens, even, maar, misschien, nou, ook, soms, and toch. Ga maar zitten is polite, but can you say ga zitten for a stronger, ruder sense?
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There's probably enough 2 centses in here already, but I throw in 2 more: in Spanish, the idea of "used to" is expressed in the imperfect tense, a past tense form. I'd be interested to know why it's called "imperfect". Not sure about the Spanish usage but the imperfect generally does not imply a completion to the action.
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>>options 2, 3 and 4 change the voice, I think.
>No, the voice remains passive, but the mood changes.
thanks for that; I can't seem to keep the two straight.
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I originally posted here thinking there must be a simple answer to the question, "what is this voice/mood called," so that I could reprimand the cited blogger. you know, "you shouldn't use the farshimalt mood in this situation because it is likely to ramfeezle your readers." alas and feh.
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For example, the modal particles dan, eens, even, maar, misschien, nou, ook, soms, and toch. Ga maar zitten is polite, but can you say ga zitten for a stronger, ruder sense?
Yes, ga zitten can be polite (invitation) or rude (command) only depending on the tone/voice/. The maar is of no consequence for either meaning. You can say : "ga dan nou toch maar eens even zitten" ( invitiation/ familiar ) and the nou dan dan maar eens even, those you call modal particles, mean in fact nothing. But even with the whole range of modal particles it can be said in a commanding threatening way.
When I considered English to be the easiest of the three neighbouring languages to learn it was because English does not have like French ( Italian and Spanish too) these two past tenses: the imparfait and the passé défini. Nor the conjunctif or conditionel. And German has those horrible Fälle and Kasus-Fallendungen. ( but now I saw those tenses wriggle up some difficulties in English too in their own way).
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I'd be interested to know why it's called "imperfect".Short answer is that the Roman grammarians called it that: imperfectus as opposed to the other past tense the perfectus. And, Faldo is right. The ancient grammarians did not have a grammatical category called aspect (German Aktionsart, Russian вид vid) which "defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state. In English, for example, the present tense sentences "I swim" and "I am swimming" differ in aspect (the first sentence is in what is called the habitual aspect, and the second is in what is called the progressive, or continuous, aspect). The related concept of tense or the temporal situation indicated by an utterance, is typically distinguished from aspect." ( link)
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German has those horrible Fälle and Kasus-FallendungenIt's interesting how the older German grammatical traditon translated these Graeco-Latin grammatical terms into German. Greek πτωσις ( ptōsis) meant literally 'falling, fall'. The romans translated this as casus (< cadō 'to fall'), and the Germans carried on the tradition with Fall. The idea was that the nominative case was normal and the oblique cases fell away from that. In older grammars, this is called accidence. English got rid of its cases and so did all the Romance languages, but the Slavic languages held on tight to theirs. It's not really a question of simplifying the language but making it complicated in different ways. 
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there must be a simple answer to the question
Languages are much more complicated things than Lynne Truss and other grammaticohooligans would have you think.
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"you shouldn't use the farshimalt mood in this situation because it is likely to ramfeezle your readers." alas and feh. works for me. btw, ramfeezle got picked up by my spellcheck, but not farshimalt.
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>ramfeezle got picked up by my spellcheck, but not farshimalt.
my spellcheck (and that used here at AWAD) chokes on 'spellcheck'.
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