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Listenever Posted 10 years ago
Grammar

Lyrics



At 1:31, the lyrics are:
But she loved me at one time
Would I promise her that night
Cross my heart and hope to die

What exactly does the second line mean here?
Is it a question?
  

Top answer

It looks that way.

  • It looks that way.
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9 Answers
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It looks that way.
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GPYIt looks that way.
If it's a question, does "would" here refer to the past irregular behavior or something else? It's hard to figure out its contextual meaning even assuming that it's a question.
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listeneverIf it's a question, does "would" here refer to the past irregular behavior or something else?
(Did you mean past regular behaviour?) If it is indeed a question, it appears to be a question that the speaker asked or is asking himself about what he would do on a particular night. It is not clear whether the question is set in the present or past
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Aside from the possibility that this is random nonsense, why isn't a question mark shown if it's indeed a question? In this video, other questions all have their own question marks. I've checked other lyrics sites as well, and none of them had a question mark for this line even when all of them had questions marks for other questions in this song lyric.

So if this isn't actually a questio
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listeneverAside from the possibility that this is random nonsense, why isn't a question mark shown if it's indeed a question? In this video, other questions all have their own question marks. I've checked other lyrics sites as well, and none of them had a question mark for this line even when all of them had questions marks for other questions in this song lyric.
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Assuming that it's a question, is it possible that they dropped the question mark because of the third line (Cross my heart and hope to die)?

And if you were to add a question mark, where would you put it? At the end of the second line or the third line?
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Probably I would put a question mark after both lines, if that is to be the interpretation:

Would I promise her that night?
Cross my heart and hope to die?
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I thought the third line was a fixed phrase.
If you put a question mark after the third line, what exactly is it supposed to mean?
It's not a shorten version of 'Would I cross my heart and hope to die", is it?
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listeneverIf you put a question mark after the third line, what exactly is it supposed to mean?It's not a shorten version of 'Would I cross my heart and hope to die", is it?
Yes. In the phrasing "Would I X? Y? Z? ...", the words "Would I" are assumed in the subsequent questions. Same with "Could I ...?", "Did I ...?", and so forth.

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