Past Conditional Statements
Now in this post we would learn about ‘past conditional statements’. The auxiliaries like would, should, could or might is used in one part of the complex sentence and any past or continuous form of verb including auxiliary cum verb or past perfect form, in the other. But, in the meanwhile the tense of the statement remains in present time. Let us study the following examples from the view of the period of the time of the statement: 1. Would you help my daughter in her studies? (simple present tense) 2. I would help him if he asked me. 3. I couldn’t help her if she did not ask for it. Note: Under the present conditional statements there is no difference between the above three statements. In this case the auxiliaries used are different. Another way of determining this types of sentences are if we use a past equivalent form of auxiliary in one part of the sentence, we must use a past form of verb in the other. Yet, the entire sentence will belong to ...