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Anonymous Posted 12 years ago
Grammar
would +be + verb - ing
I was wondering if this structure could be used for past events.
Top answer
Yes. When my father got home after a hard day down the mines, my mother would always be standing by the door with a freshly brewed cup of tea.
- Yes.
- When my father got home after a hard day down the mines, my mother would always be standing by the door with a freshly brewed cup of tea.
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3 Answers
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Yes.
When my father got home after a hard day down the mines, my mother would always be standing by the door with a freshly brewed cup of tea.
When my father got home after a hard day down the mines, my mother would always be standing by the door with a freshly brewed cup of tea.
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Anonymous I was wondering if this structure could be used for past events.Yes, it can, but it's rather rare compared to its uses for other reasons. Of the first 200 instances of this structure that I looked at on fraze.it, only six were used as an indicator of past time. That's only 3%. (Most of the rest were backshifts of will be + ing, or the futu
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CalifJim it's rather rare compared to its uses for other reasons.I agree. I did not find it easy to come up with a plausible example.
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