Verb tense

Question

Is the following sentence considered present tense or conditional tense?"I would rather poke my eyes out with a fork."

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

green park
Is the following sentence considered present tense or conditional tense?
"I would rather poke my eyes out with a fork."

It depends on the system of grammatical analysis that you are using. Some methods don't even recognize a conditional tense — though you will hear the term "conditional mood".

And don't confuse tense with time. I'd say it's a conditional tense (because it has would), or that it's a modal tense (with would), but the present is the time reference. ('would rather' = 'prefer to')

As it turns out, your ability to label this sentence with the name of a tense has nothing to do with your success in English, so I would not worry about it if I were you.

CJ

P.S. My own favorite in this category is

I'd rather take out my own appendix with an ice pick.

BillJ · Answer

green park
Is the following sentence considered present tense or conditional tense?
"I would rather poke my eyes out with a fork."

I would rather poke my eyes out with a fork.

Syntactically, it's past tense since the only tensed verb in the sentence is the past tense modal verb would.

Semantically, "would" can of course be used to refer to past events or situations, though in your example it has nothing to do with past time but is used to express modal remoteness. It may well be part of a comparative construction, e.g. I would rather poke my eyes out with a fork than watch "Chimps On Ice"!

We don't talk of "conditional" as being a tense, but a type of adjunct normally introduced by if, as in I'll do it if you pay me where the if clause is called a conditional adjunct.

Verb tense

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