Jayanth2689 wrote:Hey Ron, i agree that this would does not agree with the definition of a conditional would. (an unlikely case)
Nevertheless, the OE says differently, am i missing something here?
In the original sentence, the verb "had implemented" is in the past perfect tense, indicating that this event occurred at some point before the commissioner spoke. The verb "will try", however, is in the simple future. When the future is indicated from the point of view of the past, the simple future is not used. Instead, the conditional is required. For example, "The man said that he would buy a new car" is preferable to "The man said that he will buy a new car." We need to find a conditional verb. Moreover, the pronoun "it" begins a new clause and thus requires repetition of "that" in order to make clear, using parallel structure, that this new clause is still something that the commissioner said. For example, "The man said that he would buy a new car and that he would drive it everywhere" is preferable to "The man said that he would buy a new car and he would drive it everywhere."
with reference to the explanation given, does 'conditional' mean MAY/MAY NOT happen? also, i went through the Demographers link you had posted..there you have mentioned this -
if you want to get technical, the name "conditional" is used for both of the uses i described.
this is why
IT IS A REALLY, REALLY BAD IDEA TO WORRY ABOUT GRAMMATICAL TERMINOLOGY, other than
(1) the names of extremely basic units
(2) the names of things that don't have a simple description.
as an example of (2), the term "past participle" is useful, because there are so many different forms of past participles (given, thrown, driven, dedicated, done, etc.) that it's impossible to describe the concept in a simpler way.
on the other hand, "conditional" is a completely useless name, because you can just call it "would + verb".
true story: i had no idea what
any of these names were -- except things like noun, verb, etc. -- until i started teaching for manhattangmat.
true story #2: i still don't know what most of them are called, but i can google them before posting and pretend that i knew them all along. |:
SO, my understanding is this - the correct answer should have the past tense of 'will'. But why use the past perfect tense? Couldn't the question have just said -
'the government implemented'
opinion appreciated!
no, that would be incorrect.
remember, (present + present perfect), when translated into the past, gives (past + past perfect).
so:
He says that the government has done xxxxx
translates into the past as
He said that the government had done xxxxx
