Oh, Grammarians Extraordinaire, Is there a relationship between the future perfect passive and conditional mood? I sent around this cartoon yesterday -- http://www.savagechickens.com/blog/2005/12/christmas-carol.html to which someone I work with responded that the construction is also in the conditional mood and that one could argue it's in the imperative as well. (What?) I had always thought (rather simplistically, perhaps) that the conditional mood was indicated by the auxiliaries _could_, _may_, _might_, _would_, and _should_, but as I began to look into it this morning, I was startled to find that, in some grammars, the conditional is not even listed as a mood. Conversely, or perhaps contrarily, one source (this one online) identifies four types of conditional moods, all four illustrated by conditional clauses, two of which contain perfect forms, not a one in the lot with a modal auxiliary. But most of my grammar texts do not seem to address this mood at all. Can anyone in this forum enlighten me on this point? Is the conditional mood indicated only by certain auxiliary verbs? Or does the conditional mood also embrace sentences with conditional clauses? Is the conditional, in fact, not a mood? And, just for fun, is there a relationship between mood and tense? I wouldn't be surprised to find that different systems construe this point differently, but I would like to understand something of those different approaches, and the thinking that drives them. As always, thanks! Odile To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/