A question about the modal verbs "will" and "would" from Student K.

“Hihi Ms Charlotte, 

I want to know the difference between “would” & “will.”

E.g. “..hoped authorities “would resume” the full-day classes in phases, with senior year students as the first group.” 

Can I use “will” instead ?

Thanks.”

Dear K., 

The course actually goes through all aspects of the overall grammatical structure of English and teaches students how to analyze this structure using a basic framework from Linguistics. As such, we generally hope that students can finish the course once before asking us questions, because a lot of the questions that might come up at the beginning of the course will be clear by the end, and when we explain things, we also need to draw on the concepts and framework we teach throughout the course. 🙏🏻 Thanks for your understanding. Here is a brief explanation to your question anyway: 

“would” and “will” are two of the modal verbs in English. Modal verbs are a special class of auxiliary verbs (輔助動詞）in English that play a special structural role and build finite verbs that express modality. This class of verbs is explained in detail in Lecture 4.5 of the course. All other relevant information about finite verbs/verbs in general (e.g. different verb forms, what finite vs. non-finite verbs are) can be found in Section 4. 

Modal verbs in English include “would”, “will”, “must”, “should”, “can”, “could”, “shall”, “might”, “may”. These verbs have a special structural role in clauses: They are ALWAYS auxiliary verbs in finite verbs:

E.g. “I must do my homework” / “[ Authorities would resume classes ] if [ the case numbers went down ]”  / “He could have done it.” / “They should be swimming now.” / “It must be done.” 

In “I must do my homework”, “must do” is the finite verb. It is built from a modal auxiliary verb “must” and the bare infinitive form (no marker “to”) of the main verb “do”. Together, “must do” is the finite verb of this clause. This finite verb form is in simple aspect and active voice. 

In the first clause of “[Authorities would resume classes ] if [ the case numbers went down ]”, “would resume” is the finite verb. It is built from the modal auxiliary verb “would” and the bare infinitive form of the main verb “resume”. This finite verb form is in simple aspect and active voice.

In “He could have done it”, the finite verb is “could have done”. It is built from the modal auxiliary “could”, plus the bare infinitive of another auxiliary verb “have”, and the past participle form of the main verb “do” (done). The finite verb form “could have done” is in perfect aspect and active voice. 

In “He should be swimming now”, the finite verb is “should be swimming”. It is built from the modal auxiliary verb “should”, plus the bare infinitive of another auxiliary verb “be”, and the present participle form of the main verb “swim” (swimming). The finite verb form “should be swimming” is in progressive aspect and active voice. 

In “It must be done”, the finite verb is “must be done”. It is built from the modal auxiliary “must”, plus the bare infinitive of another auxiliary verb “be”, and the past participle of the main verb “do” (done). This finite verb form shows simple aspect and passive voice. 

The examples above outline the structural role of modal verbs. They are always auxiliary verbs that build finite verbs with a bare infinitive after them, either of the main verb or another auxiliary + a participle form of the main verb. A modal verb can never be the full finite verb by itself, i.e. X “I must my homework”, “They can lunch later.” (When there is an implicit main verb that has been stated previously in context, we can omit the implicit main verb, e.g. “can you do it? Yes, I can (do it).” but this is just due to omission.) 

All of this is explained in detail in L4.5. 

Another special feature of modal verbs as a verb class is that they do NOT change forms. These modal verbs only have this one form. They do not change into other finite forms, e.g. there is NO “musted” or “cans” or “shoulds”, and there are NO non-finite forms like infinitives and participles either, e.g. NO “musting”, “woulded”, “to can”. This is also explained in L4.5.

Now, in terms of the meanings they express, modal verbs add modality to a finite verb. “Modality” means a certain subjective feeling of the speaker. This feeling could be something like “certainty,” (e.g. “It must be true” / “I will be there.”), “likelihood” (e.g. “He could win”), “confidence” (e.g. “We shall come out of this stronger!”), “obligation” (e.g. They must call before the meeting”) etc. These are also explained in L4.5.

Each of the modal verbs expresses its own modality, and many of them can express a range of modalities depending on the context of the sentence, or even depending on the aspect/voice of the finite verb. L4.5 explains these things comprehensively with examples. 

Since your question is about “would” and “will”, we will just focus on them. These modal verbs could express a range of “modalities” and have a range of practical usages, but it wouldn’t be possible to explain all of them here, so we will just focus on the context of your particular sentence. Again, L4.5 tries to be as comprehensive as possible with the modalities that are expressed by each individual modal verb.

[ They hoped [ (that) authorities would resume full-day classes in phases, with senior year students as the first group. ] ] 

(I made two changes to the sentence you quoted. First, the outer clause has the finite verb “hoped” but no subject, so it’s not a complete clause. I put in “they” as the subject. Second, I took out the article noun marker “the” marking “full-day classes” because this plural noun phrase is commonly used without a noun marker—it is noun phrase that is not referring to something specific but only generally to full-day classes.)

There are two clauses in this sentence. There is one “that”-embedded clause [ (that) authorities would resume full-day classes in phases, with senior year students as the first group] within the outer clause “[They hoped…..]”.

Inside the “that”-embedded clause, the finite verb is a modal finite verb: “would resume”. 

“would” is a modal verb that expresses a range of different modalities and has many practical usages. In this particular context, the modal verb “would” is expressing the modality of “possibility”—particularly, the possibility of a hypothetical scenario. The speaker is expressing that “they hoped 他們希望” that there is the possibility that this will happen: “他們希望有關部門（有機會）會在之後逐步重開全日課程, with senior year students as the first group.”

The modal finite verb group “would resume” is expressing a “hope” for this “possibility”. It does not express “certainty” that this will definitely happen.

This is one of the main modalities that the modal verb “would” expresses in English: possibility of hypothetical scenarios/conditional situations. That’s why we very often use a modal finite verb with “would” in a clause that is linked to another one that has a finite verb in subjunctive mood (L4.4), which is a grammatical mood shown by finite verbs that expresses “conditional” meanings grammatically:

e.g. [ I would go to the party ] if [ he went too.]   

(“would go” expresses a “conditional” meaning about the hypothetical situation of going to the party. This clause is linked to another clause with the finite verb “went”, which has subjunctive mood and expresses a conditional meaning.)

Or “would” often expresses “conditional” meanings by itself in a clause too: 

e.g. “I would love to go out with you!” 

The finite verb “would love” expresses that, given the hypothetical situation of “going out with you”, I would love to do it—（有這機會的話/時侯）我會好樂意同你出街！

That’s why the finite verb “would resume” is quite appropriate in the embedded clause here. The speaker is trying to express that “they hoped” that there is the possibility that the authorities would resume full-day classes. It is not certain that the authorities will do so, but “they hoped” that they would. 

Another possible way of interpreting this “would resume” is to interpret it as if the “would” is expressing another of its possible meanings, which is “a future action expressed in the past”. 

E.g. “I said that I would go to the party, but I didn’t have time.” 

In this example, “would go” is not expressing a conditional meaning but rather expressing “a future action” in the past time of this sentence. The sentence starts with the outer clause “I said…” (past tense) and ends with a linked clause that also has a finite verb in past tense “did (not) have”. This means that, in this context, the party is already over by the time this sentence is being said. The “would go” should be interpreted as a “future action within the past tense of this sentence” —我之前話我之後會去個party，但係最後無時間.

In the context of your example, both interpretations of the modality of “would” are possible, and both are pretty similar in terms of meaning—他們之前表示希望有關部分之後會/可以逐步重開全日課程.

You asked if we “can” use “will resume” instead. It depends on what you mean by “can” — because, like I mentioned earlier, structurally, auxiliary verbs all have the same function, so of course you can use “will resume” to replace “would resume” in the embedded clause here in terms of structure. You can also say “can resume” or “must resume” or “might resume” and use any modal verb to build this finite verb if it is just about structure. 

If we are not purely talking about structure, then of course using a different modal verb to build the finite verb would express a different modality and meaning, even if the difference is a small one. 

“will” is a separate modal verb from “would” in modern English (even though these forms were linked in the past), and as such, it expresses its own set of modalities and meanings. The most common modality it expresses is “certainty in the future”. This is, in fact, how we build future tense finite verbs in English — e.g. “I WILL DO it tomorrow.” / “They WILL LOSE.” etc. What we call “future tense finite verbs” in English are in fact all finite verb forms built with the modal verb “will”. 

Because we use “will” so often to build finite verbs in future tense, this has kind of become the only modality that “will” can express. E.g. “The authorities will resume full-day classes” expresses the meaning that “the authorities will (certainly) resume full-day classes (in the future).” 

So, if you put “will resume” in the embedded clause of your sentence, it would express the meaning that “They hoped that the authorities will certainly resume classes”.

Because the outer clause has the finite verb “hoped”, which means 希望, it is less natural to say “will resume” in the embedded clause because what “they hoped” is not a certain thing that will happen in the future. “They hoped” that there is the possibility for this in the future. That’s why “would resume” is more appropriate. It can express the modality of “possibility”. 

However, having said all this, it is not too unnatural to say “they hoped that the authorities will resume classes” either. If it is “will resume”, the meaning is less about a “hypothetical situation” and more about the fact that “they hoped that, soon/eventually, this will happen.” 

There is a difference in meaning in the context of this sentence, but it is not a big or significant one. In Chinese, whether you say “would resume” or “will resume” in the embedded clause here, we would translate the sentence as 他們希望有關部分之後會逐步重開全日課程.

Ms. Charlotte