On 08/08/15 22:56, Paul Looney wrote:
Richmond,

The key here is the “if” - which creates a conditional clause - which requires the 
past plural of the verb (in this case “were”). This is similar to the “wenn" 
clause in German (Deutsch) and the “ut” clause in Latin.
If I were able, I’d thank you in person for mentioning this.

Paul Looney

I'm not sure anent that:

"He had been visiting a friend in the neighbouring county, and that
friend having recently had his grounds laid out by an improver, Mr.
Rushworth _was returned_ with his head full of the subject, and very eager
to be improving his own place in the same way; and though not saying
much to the purpose, could talk of nothing else."

Jane Austen, "Mansfield Park"

Richmond.

On Aug 8, 2015, at 9:42 AM, Richmond <richmondmathew...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jane Austen [amongst others] uses an interesting type of grammatical 
construction of this sort:

After breakfast, the girls walked to Meryton to inquire if Mr. Wickham
_were returned_, and to lament over his absence from the Netherfield ball.

Pride and Prejudice.

I would like to analyse a million word corpus that I have been granted access 
to for this type of construction.

However, I don't want to find examples of only 'were returned', but all 
examples of

were + infinitive / preterite / past participle

and, presumably for that I shall have to use wildcards . . .

OR ???

Richmond.
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