Homework question

Patti Kurtz tb5fab at GMAIL.COM
Fri Jun 17 13:27:02 UTC 2005


Without a context, it's hard, but perhaps the teachers expected it to be
past tense, as in "I knew you would do well on the math test."  The
"know" combined with "would" sounds a little odd to my ear, though not
ungrammatical.  For me, the meaning of "I know you would do well" is "If
you took the test I know you'd do well" whereas the second one "I knew
you would do well" means "You took the test and did well as I knew you
would."

Not sure if that's even close, just my take on it.

Patti Kurtz

Ed Keer wrote:

>---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Ed Keer <edkeer at YAHOO.COM>
>Subject:      Homework question
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>A friend's child was told the following sentence is
>ungrammatical:
>
>I know you would do well on the math test.
>
>It sounds ok to me. Any insight into what's wrong with
>this?
>
>Ed
>
>
>
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--

Straker - Good. Let me give you a piece of advice Paul. Don't ever judge
a situation by the end of a conversation.



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