Would have come - conditional III

[Guest]

Test No. incompl/inter-90 "Tenses", question 1

I ......... come if I had had time.

(a) have
(b) had
(c) would have
(d) did

Test No. incompl/inter-90 "Tenses", answer 1

I would have come if I had had time.

Correct answer: (c) would have

Your answer was: incorrect
I had come if I had had time.
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why didn't you use "had"

[Torsten]

This is a Conditional III construction which has two clauses, one that expresses a condition and one that describes the result. The condition clause starts with the word if and is followed by a Past Perfect construction. (If I had come earlier.) As you know the past perfect is made up by a form of have + past participle of the verb and the past participle of come is come.
The second clause of the third conditional describes a result and consists of would + have + past participle.
Sometimes the if-clause appears first and sometimes the would-have clause appears first in a sentence:

If I had left earlier I would have caught the train.
I would have caught the train if I had left earlier.

Let me know if this makes sense to you.

TOEIC short conversations: A landlord talks about his business

[Uwizera]

please, I need a help, just in the few minute, I was doing exercises
Tense(1) and find that my level is verry low, each step I get 5/10,
can you help me to improuve my english.

thank you

[Snypy]

Well, it is hard to teach grammar over the internet. The best is to have teacher at school / courses to help you with that. However, if you really want to learn that way, then I recommend you to download some English grammar books in pdf format from which you can learn (I guess you should start with Elementary or Upper Intermediate level of the books). Another option is learning from some websites where they have the grammar explained in your mother tongue.

[OxfordBlues]

Sadly I have spent the past week on the unilang forum arguing with native speakers that these forms are in fact grammatical and normal in English. I'm glad to see it being discussed here.
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