Posted: Feb 17, 2017 12:39 pm
Cito di Pense wrote:scott1328 wrote:Do you understand that could is the past tense of can?
Shall I phrase it thus "au contraire, he was able to have examined the..."?
I don't know how otherwise to refer to an ability a person had at a past time.
The auxiliary 'could' does not express time or tense. It expresses mood, a mood of potential or expectation. When you add the perfective tense (could have done, and so on) it's still an auxiliary expressing mood, but now, as we say, after the fact, which is where all our discussion is taking place. With or without the perfect tense, we're speculating about stuff that hasn't happened yet. "Otherwise" is a speculation. Perhaps romansh is twiddling a many-worlds scenario, even though he's stuck with this one that we have.
Reference for grammar:
@Carson-Newman University, Tennessee
http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/grammar_moods.htmlMost Indo-European languages, in addition to verb tenses (which demonstrate time), have verb moods (which indicate a state of being or reality). For instance, the most common moods in English include the following:
The indicative (indicating a state of factuality and reality): "A cat sits on the stove." Most sentences in English are in the indicative mood. It simply states a fact of some sort, or describes what happens, or gives details about reality.
The imperative (indicating a state of command): "Give me back my money." One marker of the imperative is that frequently the subject does not appear in the sentence, but is only implied: "(You) Give me back my money."
The interrogative (indicating a state of questioning): "Will you leave me alone now?" One marker of the interrogative is that frequently the speaker inverts the subject-verb order by placing the helping verb first, before the subject: "Will you leave me alone?" instead of "You will leave me alone." Frequently the interrogative appears with requests for a course of action or requests for information.
The conditional (indicating a conditional state that will cause something else to happen): "The bomb might explode if I jiggle that switch." Also, "The bomb could explode if you jiggle that switch." The conditional is marked by the words might, could, and would. Frequently, a phrase in the conditional appears closely linked to a phrase in the subjunctive (see below) preceded by a subordinate conjunction like if.
Another, rarer mood is the subjunctive mood (indicating a hypothetical state, a state contrary to reality, such as a wish, a desire, or an imaginary situation). It is harder to explain the subjunctive. Five hundred years ago, English had a highly developed subjunctive mood. However, after the fourteenth century, speakers of English used the subjunctive less frequently. Today, the mood has practically vanished; modern speakers tend to use the conditional forms of "could" and "would" to indicate statements contrary to reality. The subjunctive only survives in a few, fossilized examples, which can be confusing.GrahamH wrote:Say he should have done otherwise, as guidance for the future.
Even saying what one 'should' do is conditioned on the results one presumably wants.
Could is the correct past tense form for can. That it is also used as a modal for other purposes is unfortunate. For example:
Yesterday I could enjoy archibald's absence. Today I cannot.
Yesterday I was able to enjoy archibald's absence. Today I am not able to.
https://simple.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/can
Did you know, Cito, that "were" is the subjuntive form of "to be"? Shall we reinterpret everyone's usage of that word as a subjunctive statement expressing a desire or a wish, or a counterfactual?
Regardless, even if my meaning was unclear, I have clarified it now. I was describing a state of affairs in the past. I was not describing a metaphysical stance. Jesus titty fucking Christ.