Correct sentence?

anonymousI will explain you my understanding once you reply.

I look forward to seeing what you have come up with.

CJ

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Good morning, CJ. I have nailed different uses of would and have always been confused when I use it for uncertainty. Now I finally come to understand that it’s not would that makes the sentence less certain but it’s the verbs. So far, we have used the verbs: seem, suggest, appear, assume, indicate with would with the meaning of uncertainty. It doesn’t mean that we can use would with any verb to express uncertainty. For eg.

A: Cows would eat this plant.

The would in the sentence can’t be used to show uncertainty. Let’s say I am uncertain whether cows eat his plant or not. I simply can’t use would with the verb “eat” to express my uncertainty.

Another example,

B: Having been helped by Dan would mean a lot to me.

The would in the sentence above can’t be used to show uncertainty. If I am uncertain whether being helped by Dan means a lot to me or not, I simply can’t use would to express this meaning.

In both sentence A and sentence B, would is simply second conditional. There is no other way to interpret the use of would.

Now why is that?

It’s because it’s got everything to do with the verbs that I am using in the sentences and nothing to do with would. Let’s compare the verbs that we have used in the sentences that can be used with would to show uncertainty and that can’t be used with would for uncertainty.

verbs: suggest, seem, assume, guess, indicate and appear. These verbs are what I would like to call them Supporting Verbs. These are not action or definitive verbs but work like supporting verbs. Definitely, there are many other verbs like these. “Indicate” was what came to my mind so I just google searched for a piece of writing with “would indicate”. That’s is how I found out the article and presented it to you and asked you whether would was conditional or non-conditional and you said it was a non-conditional would.

vs.

Verbs: eat, mean. These verbs are what I would like to call them main verbs or definite verbs or decisive verbs. As soon as you use “would” with these verbs, that would is definitely a second conditional would. Would can’t be used with these verbs to show uncertainty. Of course, the majority of verbs fall into this category.

This is my understanding. Please let me know if you think I finally get it. It’s about knowing what kind of verbs I can use with would to that show uncertainty using would non-conditionally. I have one more question after you reply.