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Hi again,<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite><font size=3>It's not right to say,
as someone did, that if +would removes the volitional force of
"would" in favour of the <br>
"hypothetical or counterfactual" one.
</font></blockquote><br>
If someone said that, it certainly wasn't me, Yorick ;-) On the contrary,
I'm aware that "standard" examples of IF + WOULD are indeed
volitional, and that those few that aren't are all the more interesting
for us linguists.<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite><font size=3> I'm pretty sure
though that the negative form with <br>
if is distinctively American ["If he would have had the balls
to..." <br>
as someone suggested] and grates on other native speakers for
reasons <br>
I cant quite see, since "would have had" is standard English.
</font></blockquote><br>
Indeed! The linguistic problem is that IF-clauses are, in English as in
French, incompatible with WILL/WOULD whenever the modal is NOT
volitional:<br>
*If he will come tomorrow, we'll go to the movies (cf. French "*s'il
viendra demain... ")<br>
*If he would come tomorrow, we'd go to the movies (cf. French "*s'il
viendrait demain...")<br>
Interestingly, the incompatibility is extended in English to
WHEN-clauses, again unless the modal is volitional:<br>
*When he will come tomorrow, we'll go..."<br>
(which is not the case in French, BTW, but this is neither here nor
there)<br><br>
But the reason why I'm mentioning French here is that indeed, the
IF...WOULD pattern does exist, even though it's deemed
substandard/ungrammatical:<br><br>
?Si j'aurais su, je n'y serais pas allé (lit. "If I would have
known, I wouldn't have gone) <br>
The standard form should be "Si j'avais su..." with imperfect
tense<br><br>
Jean-Charles<br>
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