The other day, I was sitting in Linguistics learning about Early Modern English. You and I have talked about how the random fun facts thrown out by our professors are often the best things about our classes, and I got one the other day that was especially interesting.
So, nowadays, we mostly only use the word "would" to put a verb into conditional tense. As in, "If I won the lottery, I would pay off my college tuition." We can also denote conditional with "could" or "should." Now, it's kind of strange of English to form conditional tense like this--I believe most languages do so with a verb ending instead. (This makes forming and understanding conditional in French right confusing--there's no way to make the distinction in meaning between "would," "could," and "should" except by context.) I've been wondering idly about why English forms conditional like this, and I believe I may have a clue to the answer.
In Old English (and even up to Early Modern), the word "would" was a verb: a form of the verb "to will," vaguely synonymous with "to wish." This usage still survives in one phrase that I can think of in Modern English: "I would rather." What's interesting about this, though, is that in modern usage we don't think of the "would" of this phrase as the verb. We put the emphasis on "rather," thus in effect creating the word "to rather," which pretty much means the same thing as "to prefer." Originally, the "rather" in this phrase was....an adverb? We even turn this phrase into a contraction: "I'd rather," attaching even less importance to what was originally the verb and making this a conditional phrase when it really has no business being one. When this common phrase was formed, I'm guessing the stress would fall differently; something like "I would, rather, that my tea had more sugar in it."
So, what happened to "would" between Old and Modern English? Well, somehow we started using it to show the a verb was conditional. Originally, a phrase like "I would do my laundry" actually meant I wish to do my laundry. Since then, it's gone through a change in meaning so that it now means that if circumstances were different, I would be doing my laundry, but alas, something has come up and I simply can't. It has no meaning that I actually want to do my laundry in the modern usage.
So, as "would" became a conditional marker and its meaning changed, while simultaneously the conjugated form of pretty much every verb was changing drastically, the original meaning of "would" got left behind, surviving only in the one phrase "I would rather." Well, it also shows up in Modern English with its original usage when someone is trying to make their language sound archaic. For example, Lord of the Rings. Also, the book I'm reading right now, which uses it profusely:
He closed his eyes. "Adjunct, I would be there when the time came."
She was silent and he knew without opening his eyes that she was studying him, gauging his worth. He was beyond unease and beyond caring. He'd stated his desire; the decision was hers.
....Did all of that make sense? I would know your opinion. :D
