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This is used in Conditional Type 3. But no one knows what tense this is...

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  • 1
    Perfect continuous conditional tense?
    – Rayan Khan
    Commented Mar 25, 2020 at 11:43
  • 3
    The prevailing school of thought on ELU seems to be that English has only two tenses (present simple: I walk; past simple: I walked) and a host of constructions employed to show time frame; irrealis, perfective, repeated scenarios etc.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Mar 25, 2020 at 12:54
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    @EdwinAshworth When English is said to have only two tenses, are the two tenses the present simple and the past simple? If so, is I was sleeping a non-tensed clause?
    – JK2
    Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 3:26
  • @JK2 (b) No; that's reserved for pure participial / infinitival usages. (a) Here, 'was' is in the past simple, of course, though the auxiliary is used in a construction one probably still uses the traditional label 'past continuous' for. The semantics (in the past; durative state) is of course invariant; it's just how the word 'tense' is 'stipulating-defined'. The modern uses need there to be an inflecting form of the simplex verb (at least for the 'most inflecting' verb/s): am/are/is...; was/were)..
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 11:59
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    @EdwinAshworth Are you talking about grammatical tenses or semantic tenses?
    – CJ Dennis
    Commented Mar 27, 2020 at 1:17

2 Answers 2

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In English, tense of a finite clause is always marked on the first verb of the finite clause, and is either 'present' or 'past'. (A non-finite clause doesn't have any tense.)

In your example, the first verb would is the only finite verb--and the only tensed verb--and is in the past tense. Therefore, would have been is in the past tense.

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the verb group 'would have been' is

present (have), finite, perfect (been), non-progressive, modal (would), positive, non-contrastive

which in so-called 3rd conditionals expresses past irrealis, eg,

Had you been there, it would have been nice.

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