[Corpora-List] If + would , would

[Yorick Wilks]

It's a pity youve gone for that particular pattern, if only because  
the repeated "would" is unaesthetic to many speakers (and of course  
it's NOT actually repeated in the woodchuck verse), and you therefore  
dont get at the uses that are more particularly American, which is  
what you seem to want. It's not right to say, as someone did, that if 
+would removes the volitional force of "would" in favour of the  
"hypothetical or counterfactual" one. Look at "If you would place  
your leg there I could lift you up" which is both volitional and  
hypothetical--i.e. it's asking you to do something, which "will" isnt  
in the same way. I'm pretty sure though that the negative form with  
if is distinctively American  ["If he would have had the balls to..."  
as someone suggested] and grates on other native speakers for reasons  
I cant quite see, since "would have had" is standard English. Has  
anyone worked out how recent the "If..would have had.." form is?
Yorick Wilks








On 22 Mar 2006, at 06:02, Parveen Umm Abdul Aziz wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> Can someone help please?
>
> How often does this grammatical construction occur in American  
> English? And, in which particular genre?
>
> If ... would ..., ... would .........
>
> Thank you all in adavnce