You don't know what you got/have got until it's gone.

[Holmes]

No, I think it isn't there for these children.

I think, too, of 'd rather. One thing that I know hasn't "been there," in my mind, when I've used 'd rather is had rather than would.

That is, for me, the full form of a sentence like I'd rather fly is I would rather fly rather than I had rather fly.

Yet I have learned that had rather used to be the standard form, and that that (as Poutsma points out) was in itself a change from had liever/liefer!

Perhaps, just as language can evolve such that a different modal is used in a modal expression, it can also evolve such that a modal in such an expression is annihilated.

Some people may, of course, consider such an evolution a devolution, but that involves a value judgement.

 

[emsr2d2]

I think four pages is enough, and I suspect we've strayed a long way from the OP's main question.

Thread locked.