A Corpus Analysis of Would‐ Clauses Without Adjacent If‐ Clauses

This article reports the findings of a corpus analysis of a grammatical structure taught in intermediate‐ or advanced‐level ESL/EFL texts: clauses that contain the modal would to signify hypothetical and counterfactual meaning. Contrary to the way these structures are represented in ESL/EFL textbooks—as would ‐clauses adjacent to conditional clauses with if —these corpus data indicate that would ‐clauses in counterfactual/hypothetical environments occur more often quite distant from or entirely without any corresponding if ‐clauses. Often the hypothetical and counterfactual conditions are present but are marked in ways other than by prototypical if ‐clauses. The study categorizes the conditional and hypothetical uses of would ‐clauses in spoken and written corpora, and it offers pedagogical suggestions based on the findings.