Would you answer this question? I would if I could.

November 18, 2008 5:06 AM

In a sentence such as "When I was younger, I would swim a mile before going to work every day," what grammatical tense is in play?

My days of teaching English here in Japan are long behind me, but that doesn't stop people from poking me for answers when they need a bit of language advice. Yesterday, a couple of (Japanese) friends were discussing the lyrics to the song 'Those Were the Days', and were misunderstanding this structure (which comes back again and again):
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we'd choose
We'd fight and never lose ...

To my friends, the structure 'I would (something) ...' seems to be a future conditional, and they had trouble accepting my assurance that in this context, it is 'past tense'; this song is about looking back at events that happened many years ago, and there is nothing 'conditional' about the phrases at all. But just what 'tense' is this structure?

posted by woodblock100 to writing & language (14 comments total)

The imperfect tense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperfect_tense
posted by kevin-o at 5:28 AM on November 18, 2008

I understand it as "would" being the past tense of "will". That is, if you're using "will" in the sense of expressing a habit (note definition 2 in the m-w link), the verb becomes "would" when the habit was in the past.

Example: Every day, I will swim a mile before going to work. --> Every day, I would swim a mile before going to work.
posted by blue mustard at 5:37 AM on November 18, 2008

Wikipedia concurs with blue mustard.
posted by Partial Law at 5:53 AM on November 18, 2008

It's imperfective aspect; English doesn't really have a syntactic imperfect tense. Think of it this way, most sentences capture two points of time: the time of utterance and the time of the action in the sentence. This there is a past tense element to the above examples because the event(s) in question took place before the utterance. However, because it describes a series of events rather than one discrete event it ends up as imperfective.

How is that different from perfective aspect? I had (already) eaten dinner, for example. Well, perfective involves three distinct points of time in a sentence: time of utterance, the action (eating dinner), and (due to the past tense) an intermediate point in between at which the action was completed. It's easy to shift that into an imperfective by taking the one event and making into a series, hence Usually, I had already eaten dinner.

Lastly, there are also future imperfectives and perfectives, just to underline that were talking about aspect more than tense. Perfective: I will have already eaten dinner. Imperfective: We will fight and never lose.

However, if you really, really want a tense on your first example, I would call it past habitual.
posted by Alison at 5:56 AM on November 18, 2008 [4 favorites]

I think Alison's "past habitual" is a good description.

I understand it as "would" being the past tense of "will".

No. "Would" is in origin the past tense of "will," but that's irrelevant here. "Would" + infinitive is its own construction, and "will" is irrelevant.
posted by languagehat at 6:57 AM on November 18, 2008

"Would" + infinitive is its own construction, and "will" is irrelevant.

"Will" is irrelevent? So help me understand... Do you think the similarity in these two sentences is a coincidence or what:

1. Every day, I will swim a mile before going to work.
2. Every day, I would swim a mile before going to work.
posted by blue mustard at 7:29 AM on November 18, 2008

"Will" is not specifically relevant to "would" in this case -- you're noticing that they can occur in the same sentence frame, which does not mean that they're related here any more than "will" is related to other modals (note that any modal can occur there -- "can", "might", "should", "must" are others).

English much more frequently uses simple present to denote habitual behavior (e.g. "he smokes") and I don't think the standard reading of your sentence 1. is the habitual, especially as used with the first person. Actually, I don't think that reading is readily available to most speakers (although my intuitions are shot, as working with speaker intuitions forms part of my day job...).
posted by tractorfeed at 7:50 AM on November 18, 2008

I don't think the standard reading of your sentence 1. is the habitual,

Maybe so... the "every day" is trying to suggest that "will" be read here in the sense of the second listing from the m-w link: "used to express frequent, customary, or habitual action or natural tendency or disposition." It's this particular usage that leads to the usage of "would" in the OP's example. However there may be a better way to phrase this example to make it clearer.

Perhaps consider one of the examples from m-w entry: "he will work one day and loaf the next."

What does this become if it occurred in the past? "He would work one day and loaf the next."

languagehat: "Would" + infinitive is its own construction

In the same way that "will" + infinitive is its own construction.
posted by blue mustard at 8:19 AM on November 18, 2008

Blue mustard, languagehat is right in the same sense that "had" in "I had been swimming, when the wave hit me," has nothing to do with the past tense of the verb "to have". It's a linguistic construct for expressing a type of past tense.
posted by knave at 8:22 AM on November 18, 2008

In the same way that "will" + infinitive is its own construction.

I wasn't going to bother responding because I figured tractorfeed had it covered, but you still appear not to be getting it, so:

1) Would is historically related to will, although the concept of "tense" is not really appropriate to modal verbs.

2) This interesting historical information is irrelevant to the analysis of these constructions in contemporary English.

3) Yes, "will" + infinitive is its own construction; in what way do you think that's relevant? So are "may" + infinitive and "might" + infinitive.

Modals are a fascinating and complicated element of the English verbal system. If you want to get a better grasp of them, read the Wikipedia article, and if you still want more, there's this thesis and its bibliography. But stubbornly insisting that would is the past of will is not going to get you anywhere.
posted by languagehat at 8:54 AM on November 18, 2008

Blue Mustard: So help me understand . . .

That was before I came in. That comment was responded to, very well, by tractorfeed. At that point Blue Mustard should have been satisfied, but no, the followup reiterates the mistaken point and adds this bit of snark:

languagehat: "Would" + infinitive is its own construction

In the same way that "will" + infinitive is its own construction.

So yeah, I'm a little impatient. And your comment violates the rules, having not even a figleaf pretense of answering the question.
posted by languagehat at 11:01 AM on November 18, 2008

And your comment violates the rules, having not even a figleaf pretense of answering the question.

Look, I questioned you, but that's not a good reason to be an asshole or a bully. In every response except this I have been discussing the usage of "would" which is the OP's question. I'm sorry you read snark in any of my responses, as there was never any intended. The answers to which I responded are not nearly as clear and conclusive as you apparently think. I don't mean this as an insult to anybody, I'm just explaining why I continued to post after your reply. I was also attempting to add information and clarity to my earlier comments, as I was uncertain that I was being understood. I'm still uncertain about being understood, but I give up.

Also, thanks for the link to that thesis. I'm sure that will be really helpful to the OP has he/she explains this to the Japanese friends.

(Ok, that last bit was snark.)
posted by blue mustard at 4:15 PM on November 18, 2008

Look, I questioned you, but that's not a good reason to be an asshole or a bully.

You're misunderstanding the situation. That was not a response to you but to someone who made a comment that's now been deleted because it did not even have a figleaf pretense of answering the question. Since you didn't see it, I can see how you misunderstood it (though you might have deduced that something had been deleted, since it should have been clear that I was addressing a respondent rather than the original poster), but now that you know, I trust you'll dial back your resentment.

I'm sorry you read snark in any of my responses, as there was never any intended.

My apologies, then; I misread you. I'm sorry none of the responses, including mine, satisfied you.
posted by languagehat at 4:46 PM on November 18, 2008

Ok. Thanks for the response, and apologies for my misunderstanding.
posted by blue mustard at 5:10 PM on November 18, 2008