In linguistics, the conditional mood (abbreviated COND) is the inflectional form of the verb used in the independent clause of a conditional sentence to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event, that is contingent on another set of circumstances. This mood differs from the subjunctive mood, which occurs in dependent clauses.
Conditional verb forms can also have non-conditional temporal uses, often for expressing "future in the past" tense.
English has no conditional mood since no inflections are used to express conditionality; instead, conditionality is expressed periphrastically using the modal auxiliary verb would. It can be combined with the other modal verbs; can -> could, shall -> should, may -> might. English has three types of conditional sentences:
Of these, only the speculative gives rise to conditional modality. Compare the forms below using the alternatives could, might, and should.
Conditionality may be expressed in several tense–aspect forms:
In German, two tense forms express conditionality:
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