...English "would", originally the past tense of "will", has several meanings. One of these is indeed a future tense transposed into the past, for the following are equivalent:
But this use of "would" in English, while very correct, is not future.Past tensewould annually lament
Judges 11:40 "the daughters of Israel went from year to year"
"would" is a past reference from your viewpoint of detached observer. But
for the author, mentally transposed into the events, "would" refers to the
future.
The thing is, "would" in this and other examples denotes future tense, but
deictic shifts relativize the future.
Significantly, in every case of deictic shift, the shift is unambiguous from
the context.
Isn't that true also for the English usage of "would"?
Vadim Cherny
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