Results tagged “modal verbs”

Modal Usage

I recently attended a talk on English grammar given by Michael Swan and he pointed out some changes in modal usage. Firstly there are changes in the way some modals are being used, like the use of you may have been klled instead of you might have been killed when we know that the person didn't die. He also said that we are using modals less nowadays, an observation that reflects on quite an important change in language, one I hadn't noticed at all.

This train..

'This train will now terminate here.' This was the announcement given on a London Underground train I was travelling on. The train was supposed to go beyond the place where it stopped.

A sure bet

In today's Independent, a British broadsheet newsapaper, Adrian Hamilton wrote the following sentences:

But I do know that if I were Tony Blair, I'd take these intimations of mortality as the occasion to get out of the job. Indeed I'm willing to bet that by Easter he may well have done so.

Mixed Conditionals

Most coursebooks teach mixed conditionals, but few look at just how mixed the conditionals can be.