The conditional perfect is a grammatical construction that combines the conditional mood with perfect aspect. A typical example is the English would have written. 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). Like the present conditional (a form like would write), the conditional perfect typically appears in the apodosis (the main clause, expressing the consequent) in a conditional sentence.
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Famous quotes containing the words conditional and/or perfect:
“Computer mediation seems to bathe action in a more conditional light: perhaps it happened; perhaps it didn’t. Without the layered richness of direct sensory engagement, the symbolic medium seems thin, flat, and fragile.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“There is only beauty—and it has only one perfect expression—Poetry. All the rest is a lie—except for those who live by the body, love, and, that love of the mind, friendship.... For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.”
—Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898)