Difference in terminology

MrTFuture-in-the-Past Continuous

Pattern of the modal "would"

I would not have let him leave, if I had known he would be going to his death.

Thanks Alphecca, but the doubt was about the terminology. Speciffically the name of such a construction. I met both [for instance one can be found here: http://webspace.buckingham.ac.uk/kbernhardt/journal/1_1/byrne1_1.html when you scroll down it is in the middle, you have: Future-in-

Few modern grammarians use the word 'future' alone or in combination with any other words to name tenses. Forms with will/would are generally referred to as modal constructions/forms.

We can refer to 'future in the past' situations: He left Skye in 1917. He would not return for twenty years.

We can use other verbs, such as was (not) to f

Note that the writer of that article points out the weaknesses of the system he describes. It is designed for learners of Russian, and Russian has perfective and imperfective aspects which do not correspond exactly to English tense/aspect systems. Any attempt to construct an artificial correspondence is probably doomed to failure.

Hi Jed, long time no see. We have been over it with the subjunctive. Then, you were right telling me not to do unnecessary divisions within and it helped. This time the inquiry is a bit different. Eg. when you explain all the English constructions known as grammatical tenses, you get to the point when you have 12 of them. Then you are hit by a typical question that there are 16 of them. So, there

'None' is the answer, because they are not tenses. (And I do not accept that there are 12 or 16 tenses! Most grammarians today accept that there are two, present/non-past/unmarked and past/marked.. Some accept the present perfect and past perfect as tenses, which makes four.)

I will/would/may/might/can/etc do are modal forms.

You would say that. Well, Jed, I ABSOLUTELY agree with you. At this academic level we could say there is a very limited number of tenses. For instance, there is no future tense in English, because 'will' is modal. The problem is when you teach not sudents, but people in their early 20s. Telling them there are no tenses in English when they have to pass tests and exmas would defeat the object. That

Sorry, I meant 'in their teens' (early 20s are obviously sutudents here ). Fingers still quick, but thinking didn`t catch up wit

When I worked in countries in which my students were obliged to apply tense labels to various forms, then I used the labels that would get them full marks in their exams. There was no point in my thinking that Label A was 'better' if Label B was the one that would be marked as correct.

Modern grammarians reserve "tense" for cases where the verb itself is inflected; that it, the verb has endings or forms to show temporal references. In situations where auxiliary verbs are involved, these are now termed aspect, voice or mood.

In traditional grammar, the ideas of inflection, mood, aspect, etc. were all mixed up together. Traditional grammar is still taught.

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