On this thread, I will regularly post new questions related to verb tenses (from my Reply). Thanks! 1st Question: “would” vs. “would have”
Woman: I’m terrible with all things computer; I’ve never even tried ordering a book online.
Man: But your father used to be a software engineer. ↓↓↓ {If her father is alive}
Man: I would have thought using the Internet would be the first thing he would teach you.
{If her father is no longer alive}
Man: I would have thought using the Internet would have been the first thing he would have taught you.
I wonder if I should change the tenses in the last sentence accordingly, depending on whether her father is alive or has passed away.
If her father is no longer alive, I suppose it makes more sense to use “would have”s throughout. At the same time though, I’m not convinced of bombarding the sentence with three “would have”s in a row.
What verb tenses would you use in each of the two situations? Thanks!
You can’t use verb tenses to indicate someone’s “living/dead” status.
> "I’d have thought
that using the internet would be
(would have been)
(was)
the first thing he’d teach you."
(he taught you)
(he would have taught you)
You can decrease the repetition of all those “would have’s” by
~ Replacing some with other verb forms
~ Writing them as contractions
All the permutations mean the same thing.
None indicates whether he is dead or alive.
Use the simplest word choice that you can.
If you want to show that her father is dead, you can say:
> “I would have thought that using the internet would be the first thing your **late **father would have taught you.”
This is not a particularly fabulous sentence in any version, and it’s too compound-y and fudgy for speech.
How about this:
> “I would’ve thought that using the internet (was / would be) the first thing he taught you.”
At least this version gets rid of all those insufferable “would have’s,” and it’s closer to natural speech.
I think that this belongs in IMHO. But I would say that verb tense can well be and often is used to show the live/dead status of someone. I read in a recently written paper: “This theorem has been proved by JB”. Since JB has been dead for a decade at least, this grated on me and should have been: “This theorem was proved by JB”. The basic reason for this is that in English, the compound past is imperfective and the simple past is perfective. And don’t anyone tell you different.
As for the OP, I the distinctions made may be correct, but don’t bother me nearly as much as my example above.
To my ear, these examples are valid, if at all, only with people of “immortal” status whose works might be considered “living.” The sentences would grate on my ears with a dead person of lesser status.
