grammaticality - Past perfect sentence in "I would have killed the snake if I had hit him..."


Is the following a correct past perfect sentence?



I would have killed the snake if I had hit him hard with a stick.




Answer



It is a perfectly normal English construction and is an example of what foreign learners are sometimes taught as the Third Conditional. The speaker imagines something that didn't actually happen (in this case, he didn't hit the snake) and speculates what the consequence would have been if it had happened (he would have killed the snake).


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