***Not a teacher***
Hi Keannu,
This is a long post, and time does not permit me to respond to all of it in detail at the moment, but I will pick up on some points...
All of the repliers said "would have come" is a certainty. but in 1 and 3, especially when there is no if-clause, the main clause's "would have pp" can mean a presumption 'cause it can be true or false.
As fivejedjon posted yesterday, this is a very complicated area of grammar which is affected by context, tone of voice etc. So it is quite difficult to list rules, and I can understand that it is difficult to grasp if there is no equivalent in your language.
First let's look at 2)
If I had won the lottery, I would have bought a car.
The construction 'if.......(then)...would have' states what the speaker considers to be a certainty.
'If they had given me the opportunity, I would have taken it.'
It still does not mean it actually is a certainty, because it is a conditional sentence where the condition is not fulfilled, so we do not actually know what happened in reality. It is not absolutely definite in reality, because I may have died before being able to take the opportunity (to use an extreme example!). It was, however, definite in my mind. I would have had every intention of taking the opportunity.
Cases 1) and 3) do not follow this rule, they are not conditionals. They use 'would have', as you say in the sense that the speaker 'presumes' he or she is correct. In case 1), the speaker is not saying 'perhaps they were looking for the bank robbers' as if he or she is unsure. 'They would have been looking for the bank robbers', although it is a presumption, is still stating what the speaker believes to be true. Now, if you asked the speaker 'Are you absolutely sure?', they may reply 'Yes', or 'Well it seems very likely'. In other words, in this type of sentence, there are varying degrees of doubt, but in effect, the speaker is stating what they believe to be a fact (or nearly a fact).
Scofield - I wouldn't expect someone like you to take this with dignity.
Sometimes in English, we talk about imaginary events, or events that have not yet happened in this way.
"If he goes to university, I would expect him to do well". At the moment, we don't know whether he is going to university, so it is a conditional (We could say 'if he goes to university, I would expect him to do well'). I could broaden this out and lose the conditional with this sort of statement:
'I would expect him to do well in life', or the contrary statement:
'I would not expect him to do well in life'. These are more general opinions, based on my assessment of the person.
So when Scofield says "I wouldn't expect someone like you to take this with dignity", it is a way of saying 'You are meeting my expectations that you are not the sort of person who can handle this with dignity'. I guess we could call this type of would-construction 'would associated with expectations' (this is my term, not an official term)
if you are sure of something, if you have a certainty about something, you will say "I will expect.."
In this context I would not say that. If you use 'will' like that, it is expressing the future tense: "I will expect you here at 5 o' clock"
Consider the following;
"I would have expected you to be late"
If this is said after someone has turned up late, it means:
"I would have expected you to be late (and you were, so I was right)"
If you said it after someone turned up early, it would mean
"I would have expected you to be late (but you weren't, so I was wrong)"
(note in speech, these would have different tones and intonation).
Alternatively
"I wouldn't have expected you to be late"
If said after someone has turned up late, means:
"I wouldn't have expected you to be late (but you were - I'm surprised)"
If said after someone turns up early:
"I wouldn't have expected you to be late (and you weren't, I was right)"
So in the Prison Break example, Scofield was effectively saying:
"Prior to this occasion, my expectation of you was that you were not someone to take this with dignity, and in the event, you have proved me right" (I have deliberately tried to avoid any use of 'would' in that sentence to avoid confusion, and it was not easy!)
The easiest way to discuss this is face-to-face with a native speaker - it is very difficult in a written forum.
Ade