[Ads-l] "would have"

[Jonathan Lighter]

You said it!

JL

On Sun, Jan 31, 2021 at 4:23 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> Interesting.  It almost seems like a calque of the French conditional,
> which allows the same usage.  It’s a kind of quasi-evidential (where
> epistemic “must (have)” is more of a standard evidential).
>
> > On Jan 31, 2021, at 2:01 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> > Used to indicate a past event known to have occurred:
> >
> > "Humans and chimps actually both evolved from a common ancestor (CHLCA)
> > that lived around 8 million years ago. Eventually, the genetic lineage
> > would have split two ways, giving rise to the precursors of hominids and
> > modern apes."
> >
> > Brits especially use this construction to indicate something that almost
> > certainly happened, but some doubt remains (virtually the same as  "must
> > have").
> >
> > But the above usage seems not to imply that.
> >
> > JL
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org