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Prototypical conditional sentences in English are those of the form "If X, then Y". The clause X is referred to as the antecedent (or protasis), while the clause Y is called the consequent (or apodosis). A conditional is understood as expressing its consequent under the temporary hypothetical assumption of its antecedent.
In predictive conditional sentences, the future tense or imperative generally appears in the main clause, but the condition clause is formed with the present tense (as in English). This contrasts with subordinate clauses introduced by certain other conjunctions, such as quand ("when"), where French uses the future (while English has the present).
Most verbs have three or four inflected forms in addition to the base form: a third-person singular present tense form in -(e)s (writes, botches), a present participle and gerund form in -ing (writing), a past tense (wrote), and – though often identical to the past tense form – a past participle (written).
The rarely used compound conditional tense uses the auxiliary velle plus the infinitive. Io velle preferer facer lo sol. = Io prefererea facer lo sol. 'I'd prefer to do it alone.' The fourth basic compound tense is the passive, formed from es (the present tense of esser 'to be') plus the past participle.
The conditional perfect progressive or conditional perfect continuous construction combines conditional mood with perfect progressive aspect. It consists of would (or sometimes should in the first person, as above) with the bare infinitive have, the past participle been and the present participle of the main verb. It generally refers to a ...
Download as PDF; Printable version; ... and the following rules account for most of them: ... and conditional), three compound tenses (past, future, and conditional ...
The conditional perfect is a grammatical construction that combines the conditional mood with perfect aspect.A typical example is the English would have written. [1] The conditional perfect is used to refer to a hypothetical, usually counterfactual, event or circumstance placed in the past, contingent on some other circumstance (again normally counterfactual, and also usually placed in the past).
The main conditional construction in Dutch involves the past tense of the verb zullen, the auxiliary of the future tenses, cognate with English 'shall'. Ik zou zingen 'I would sing', lit. 'I should sing' — referred to as onvoltooid verleden toekomende tijd 'imperfect past future tense'