Indeed. And many Muslims used to die on the way to Mecca.

I can't disagree in principle with your first paragraph but I am not happy with your introduction of 'something unspecified'; it smacks a little of deus ex machina. With no further context we are obliged to assume that the pronoun has the obvious present reference. For present expression of future possibility I see no difference between It may rain this afternoon and It might rain this afternoon and teach accordingly. It is in the forms with the perfect infinitive that I see a difficulty that not only erodes a useful distinction but can lead to ambiguity. Her house fell down yesterday. She may have been killed. is, or should be, different from Her house fell down yesterday. She might have been killed. Fortunately, this distinction is one that very rarely comes up in teaching.

I suppose that a carpette/carpet covers something and a tablecloth does that, and so does a folder or file for covering and protecting papers. IN etymology anything is possible. I believe that in New York people say 'Voy a vacunar la carpeta'.

Interesting. I didn't know that.

I agree that saying an and aspirating the h seems illogical, perhaps a recrudescence of the speak-as-you-spell movement. Homage is not a word that I use often and I have nothing to say about the comparative English and French pronunciations, except that if I find myself speaking about Orwell's book Homage to Catalonia, I definitely pronounce the h and give the word the English pronunciation.

The coupling of Ned and Ted mirrors Spanish naranja and Catalan taronja.

Yes indeed. I had forgotten that. Dropping the h in British English is a solecism so that US pronunciation sounds odd to us.

Good idea but I'm not sure it's technically possible to override the automatic close for certain posts. I have asked Typepad. A lot of royalties will certainly go to EFL publishers anywhere but I was commenting on an article in a British newspaper claiming that the language was a British invention.

I am very pleased to have been of assistance.

You are right of course but it's odd because it is set in the past. Usually such sentences refer to the present and future.

Your examples are indeed interesting. I agree that Johnny Cash’s lyrics seem to suggest something typical – but what is typical is something repeated, at least in the imagination. I really don’t know what to make of your Bill Bryson quotation. I can only say that in telling anecdotes tenses sometimes misbehave. The present simple is often used for telling jokes in a rare English use of the historical present. I have found this from Terry Pratchett: “If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!” I don’t have the context but it appears to be a description of a person rather than a hypothetical second conditional with future time reference.

An interesting suggestion. I hadn’t thought of it that way. I have no more context than I give here but I think it is a description of the situation at the time rather than an expectation or prediction from that time forth; after all, those diseases were hardly new in the 40s and 50s. Your suggestion assumes a starting point and, I think, the would can always be replaced by was to, implying a kind of unforeseeable fate: On the death of Queen Anne in 1714 there was not to be another female monarch for more than 100 years.’ but not …in the 1940s and 1950s, in each year two or three of the College’s 900 boys were to die… which sounds as if they victims had been selected personally. Your comment has led me to think of this series: 1) As I closed the door I knew that I would never enter that house again. 2) I closed the door knowing that I would never enter that house again. 3) I closed the door in the knowledge that I would never enter that house again. 4) I closed the door. I would never enter that house again. 1) is standard backshifting in reported speech in the past; 2) seems to be the use of would that you describe, the reporting verb (knowing) being in the present; 3) is similar but the present tense is implied by the phrase in the knowledge and 4) is clearly the use that you mention.

True, but as a verb meaning 'want' it can take a direct object in a non-modal sense.

I think that the 'it' means the situation in general with no precise referent. There was a possibility at the time that the win against Australia would later be seen as a turning point but in fact the situation did not develop in that way. 'May have been' implies that we don't yet know the outcome and is incompatible with the clear statement that it didn't turn out that way, i.e. it was not a turning point.

Thank you John. In general I agree but having recently dealt at length with the Telegraph and the Guardian (twice) I just wasn’t in the mood to go through the whole lot again! #1 is in fact the possessive apostrophe question. I am not convinced that ‘the man next door’ is sufficient to imply unequivocally that he is the only occupant of the house. It could be that he is a keen gardener and the rest of his family have no great interest it. In #2 the definite article is supposed to show that there was such a win; that is in the context of the question. The grammar point is that ‘may have’ is present (it is possible that it has happened but we don’t know) and ‘might have’ is past (it was possible that it would happen but it didn’t). For me the BBC’s answer is correct but its reasoning, on the basis of comparative probability, is invalid. I have mentioned this point before: http://lavengro.typepad.com/peter_harvey_linguist/2006/10/well_he_may_hav.html #3 is a horror, even in this adapted form (which has also removed Nevile Gwynne’s ‘I should like to introduce …). The commas in ‘Benedict, my brother, who’ indicate a non-restrictive clause. This is different from ‘my brother Benedict, which, as you say, can be interpreted either way. The BBC’s explanation: ‘The absence of a comma before "who doesn't" implies that there are other brothers’ leads us to consider the possibility of: ‘…my sister Clara, who lives in Madrid, to Benedict, my brother, who doesn’t, and to my only other sibling, Hilary.’ which is quite incomprehensible. When the number of commas in a sentence approaches the number of words, it’s time to start rewriting! #7 I have only met this problem fairly recently, and then as an American phenomenon. As I have explained (http://lavengro.typepad.com/peter_harvey_linguist/2013/05/english-and-the-guardian.html), Fowler’s own view was that such a distinction would be desirable as an ideal but could not be made universal as a practicality. Fowler is much more tolerant than people often realise. #9 Agreed, as I have said to Warsaw Will. #10 agree there too. All in all it’s a mess that is unworthy of the BBC. There is much talk in Britain at present about language testing. I am not sure if this is a real example of an actual official test for schoolchildren, a real example of what is being officially proposed, or the BBC’s pure invention to entertain its viewers.

Thank you Will for that comment. I don’t disagree at all that it can be seen as an adjectival form; in a sense all passives are adjectival but in Spanish we have a clear difference. ‘Estaba sentado’ definitely means that I was already in a seated position. We see the difference in: * His arm was broken when he fell. * His arm was broken when I met him. The fact that there is the slightest ambiguity means that it is invalid. It's badly thought out. I am a speaking examiner for the Cambridge exams (among other things) and I know how much effort (over years) it takes for a new exam to be approved.