Thursday, November 28, 2013

auxiliary verbs - Can anyone tell me if the use of the word "would" makes this sentence conditional/hypothetical?

So, me and some others got into a little debate about this and I found some really good information on here, and wanted to get some good expert opinions. I have 2 questions about the following statement:



"This is an attempt to collect a debt and any information obtained would be used for that purpose."



Questions 1. Does the use of "would" make this conditional/hypothetical?
I'm pretty sure that's an easy yes, which leads to the question I'm really needing answered.



Question 2. Is there a way, or any rule for certain situations, where an unspecified condition is determined based on contextual information? For example, here, it seems obvious that the condition is "IF any information is obtained". So is there any rule that says based on this sentence alone, that is the condition, or is it still technically an unknown?

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