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Anonymous Posted 15 years ago
Grammar

Tenses for subordinate clause starts with "when"

Hi. Please help me with this. I think we can have sentences where their if-clauses are in the present tense and their main clauses have the modal verb "would" as part of their verbs (like an example below):

When she tells you her good news, what would you say to her?

Compared to the sentence below which has the modal verb "will" as part of its verb in the main clause, I think the above sentence expresses less definiteness. What do you think?

When she tells you her good news, what will you say to her?

Would these be incorrect? As for me, I think the following would be incorrect.

A: If she tells you her good news, what would you say to her?

B: If she tells me her good news, I would say, "Congratulations."
  

Top answer

You are right. A: If she tells you her good news, what would will you say to her? " we use 'would' in imaginary or hypotehtical conditions.

— Vsuresh

  • You are right.
  • A: If she tells you her good news, what would will you say to her?
  • " we use 'would' in imaginary or hypotehtical conditions.
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4 Answers
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You are right.
A: If she tells you her good news, what would will you say to her?
B: If she tells me her good news, I would will say, "Congratulations."

we use 'would' in imaginary or hypotehtical conditions.
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AnonymousI think we can have sentences where their if-clauses are in the present tense and their main clauses have the modal verb "would"
Yes. You certainly can have sentences like that.
AnonymousWhen she tells you her good news, what would you say to her?
This sentence, however, has no if-clause. And even if you ch
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Hi. Thank you. When I wrote the starting post of this thread, I must admit I did make some mistakes in terms of not making the questions and example sentences consistent (that is, making them correspond to each other). I am sorry.

You wrote:


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AnonymousSo, are you saying (perhaps - sort of saying?) that the above sentence, "When she tells you her good news, what would you say to her?" isn't a sentence you would call it correct (if asked)?
Yes. I would say that that sentence is not correct.

CJ
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