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It was the evening of the World Cup Final and a man was making his way to his seat right next to the pitch. As he sat down, he noticed that the seat next to his was empty. Leaning over, he asked the guy on the other side of the empty seat if anyone would be sitting there during the match.
The guy shook his head and said, “No. That seat will remain empty.”
Astonished, the man asked, “Who in their right mind would have a seat like this for the World Cup Final and not use it?”
“Well, actually,” said the guy, looking the man straight in the eye, “the seat belongs to me. I was supposed to come with my wife, but she’s passed away. This will be my first World Cup Final without her since we got married.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” said the man. “That’s terrible. But couldn’t you find someone else to come with you? A friend, a relative, or even a neighbour to take her seat?”
The man shook his head. “Impossible,” he said. “They’re all at the funeral.”
dear professor, can you help me with that “would be sitting “? it is the second time I’m struggling with it (the first one, in the previous short story with: “they won’t be laughing”…). Is it a continuous infinite? How does it work?
thank you!
“they won’t be laughing” is a standard “future continuous” for something that will or won’t be happening at a certain time in the future. A classic example for this is something like:
“This time on Saturday, we’ll be lying on the beach in the sun.”
The action of “lying on the beach” will be already be happening at the time mentioned.
If you take this idea and put it into a story, i.e. into past time, “will” becomes “would” (the rule of moving one step back into the past (indirect speech).
Consequently, it becomes:
Tom said that at that time on Saturday they would be lying on the beach in the sun…
Does that help?