| 词组 | should, would |
| 释义 | should, would • I need not dwell here on the uses of will, shall, may, might, should, would, can, could, and must: which uses, various as they are, are as well known to us all as the uses of our teeth and our noses —Cobbett 1823 It is very tempting to adopt Cobbett's attitude and let should and would go, but they have unfortunately been dragged into the rules propounded originally in the 17th century for shall and will. We need not go into detail here (all you need to know is at shall, will), but it does seem worthwhile to point out the typical ways in which should and would are actually used. The reason should and would are mentioned with shall and will is that they function as the past tenses of those verbs. They turn up in this function in the indirect reporting of speech: • She banged on the door and said we should be late —Basil Boothroyd, Punch, 30 Oct. 1974 • ... asked in a commanding voice if I wouldn't turn to my third choice —Warren Bennis, Atlantic, April 1971 No doubt the woman in the first example said, "We shall be late." An American describing this scene might not be so accurate as Boothroyd and might very well write would even though shall had been said. In the second example the speaker might have said either will (i.e., won't in this case) or would, which is often used in place of will because it is felt to be more polite. In conditional sentences both should and would are used: • ... I should not be bothering you with this letter if I thought the trouble at all likely to end where it is today —Joseph Alsop, N.Y. Times Mag., 14 Dec. 1975 • We ... would be glad to have three or four more machines if you could send them to us —E. B. White, letter, 9 Aug. 1922 • If Eastbourne was only a mile off from Scarborough, I would come and see you tomorrow —Lewis Carroll, letter, 14 July 1877 • If Angel were as uncomplicated as he has often been read ... Tess would be much less of a novel —Robert B. Heilman, Southern Rev., April 1970 • ... had we been continued in office we would have quickly overcome the depression —Herbert Hoover, quoted in Time, 5 May 1952 Would is used with pronouns of all persons to express habitual action: • In the semicircular portico of the National Library we would meet every morning —Oliver St. John Gogarty, It Isn't This Time of Year At AW, 1954 • He would eat hot soup and drink whiskey and sweat —Aristides, American Scholar, Winter 1981-1982 • You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning —Jay Mclnerney, Bright Lights, Big City, 1984 Would is also used as a finite verb to express a wish. It is used with or without a subject: • I would God you two were the tender apple blossom and could be shipped here in a sachet bag —James Thurber, letter, October 1936 • It does not. Would that it did —Margaret Drabble, letter to the editor, Times Literary Supp., 4 Oct. 1985 • ... would that I'd kept all my charts! —John Gardner, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 30 Jan. 1983 Should is used in the sense of "ought to": • ... the necessity of accomplishing something in less time than should truly be allowed for its doing — Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa, 1935 • The third recommendation was that the fleet should be ordered to move north —Dean Acheson, quoted in Merle Miller, Plain Speaking, 1973 • His French vocabulary was drawn from conversations with his mother and aunt, and should have been full of tenderness —Mavis Gallant, New Yorker, 8 July 1985 Should also has a few idiomatic uses all to itself: • My own feeling about this, if I may put it in slang, is "I should worry." —Leacock 1943 • "He should live so long I'd make him such a price...." —Mordecai Richler, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, 1959 • Jimmy should be so lucky as to get liverwurst —Jean Gonick, Northeast Mag., 13 Jan. 1985 The point to be remembered here is this: the uses of should and would are more varied than those of shall and will, and the traditional rules, shaky as they are for shall and will, tell us even less about should and would. And we have not even tried to examine all the uses of should and would (you can find these recorded in a good dictionary). Native speakers of English mostly handle these words with Cobbett's attitude—they do what comes naturally and do not worry. Learners have more of a problem, but they should follow the practice of native speakers and not become ensnared in artificial distinctions. |
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