Timeline for Meaning of "would" in "the men of Gotham would have kept the Cuckoo so that she might sing all the year"
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:38 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Oct 20, 2013 at 16:13 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @user54503: I think If you would keep it any time, dry it very well with clean cloths (late 1700s) is effectively the same usage. Today it's really just a stylistic choice whether to use if you want to keep it or wanted to in that context, and quite possibly something similar applies to your example (i.e. - maybe "...the men of Gotham would keep the Cuckoo..." would have been considered semantically equivalent). But I don't really know. | |
| Oct 20, 2013 at 13:47 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | The volitional/deontic sense of ‘will’ is, as both you and John say, effectively obsolete in the spoken language except in certain, limited situations. It is still usable in somewhat archaising literature, though: if you read George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (now popularised as the TV series Game of Thrones), for example, you will see it used very frequently in this sense. | |
| Oct 20, 2013 at 6:36 | comment | added | user54503 | well, thank you all guys. it was really helpful even though i still have no clear understanding. i might as well ignore this case having dubbed it absolutely out of date and of no real use nowadays. yet, i was just wondering why when shifting this would (I would you were so honest a man) in to past tense it should take up perfect form as in "would have kept". still, there have been many vague and interesting cases of would in my reading experience. later i'll try to find them and bring out to discuss. | |
| Oct 19, 2013 at 22:21 | history | answered | FumbleFingers | CC BY-SA 3.0 |