Quote:
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Quote michèle 2  I hope your wishes come true.
I'm just wondering whether I could use "will" in this sentence instead of present simple. |
Yes you can. The use of the first form
comes just presents the action as a future event, whereas here
will is making a
prediction about the
willingness of the person to come (remember the post about the uses of
will and
going to?). If you say
I hope .. then you're making a prediction, so
will is fine. So :
I hope he comes(in the future) or
I hope he will come = I hope he agrees/will agree to come
But not
came.
I hope ... is seen as introducing a real prediction, so you need a first form verb (I'd avoid terms like present/past to describe verbs because they have no real meaning in terms of the English verb system, as these examples show. It's simpler to use first form -
come/will/can etc and second form -
came/would/could etc)
One use of the second form (
came/would/could) is, as you say, to express hypothetical present events (I'm using present here to describe the time of the event not the verb). But when we're speaking hypothetically we switch to
I wish ...
So to make a hypothetical prediction and/or to talk about hypothetical willingness,
I hope becomes
I wish and
will (first form) becomes
would(second form):
I wish he would come.
But it gets tricky.
I wish he came... does not refer to a hypothetical future event. It's referring to a hypothetical habitual event (remember the first form can express real habitual events -
he comes here often- so automatically the second form can express hypothetical habitual events) Here the real situation is
he doesn't come very often so the hypothetical situation is
I wish he came more often.
I hope that clarifies/will clarify the situation
