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Can the sentence "She would never believe his story" stand independently? Or should it be used with a condition like "Even if he had told her the truth, she would never believe his story." If there is no conditional clause, should I use it like "She will never believe his story"?

If I use "She would never believe his story" independently, does it mean I am not sure that she would never believe his story? If I am not sure, isn't it better to say, "She would probably not believe his story"?

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  • Obviously, establishing a mood that licenses would could be done in another sentence, or in another book for that matter. You just need the mood to be available. Whether the sentence all by itself does this is debatable. I think it does. The subject's stated disbelief is sufficient to invoke the irrealis mood and license would here.
    – Phil Sweet
    Commented Aug 7 at 14:33
  • In addition, if you are a fan of the middle voice in English, this statement can be taken as a universal truth - basically timeless and impervious to outside influence. So it can be seen as somewhat emphatic compared to she won't ever believe his story or she was never to believe his story.
    – Phil Sweet
    Commented Aug 7 at 14:48
  • But people are always saying "I would never do that!" in contexts where there's no possibility of continuing with "...unless such-and-such happened".
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Aug 7 at 18:25

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Yes, it can stand independently if would is understood as the past tense of will in the sense be willing to. In that case she would never believe his story means

She always refused to believe his story.

If would is conditional;

Even if others had assured her it was true, she would never have believed his story.

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(Explanations on the basis of A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, Quirk et al, 1985)

It can stand alone according to the two modalities (volition as insistence, mood marker) that are indicated by the contexts.

I

Example

  • He had tried to make up with her, telling her that whatever wrong he had done to her was in reality not of his own doing, that he was a victim of circumstances, and that he was only now in a position to explain to her. She would never believe his story.

In this paragraph, "would" is the modal in its function of expressing volition. Out of 3 possible sorts of volitional attitudes (intention, willingness, insistence: "He said he would phone after lunch", "Would you help?", "She would keep interrupting me."), the relevant variant here to be contended with is insistence.

II

If I use "She would never believe his story." independently, does it mean that I am not sure that she would never believe his story? If I am not sure, isn't it better that I say, "She would probably not believe his story".?

No, on the contrary, you mean that you are sure that she never will believe it, if someone told her. However, if you are not quite sure, then the addition of "probably" makes that clear. You are not now considering the use of this modal according to the scheme examined above. The function of modal "would" is now that of marker of hypothetical meaning. It can be used independently according to the fact that there is an implicit if-subordinate that results from the context.

Example

  • — So you are saying that he intends to tell her that he did not have enough time during the weekends? She knows he has been playing volleyball for hours every weekend during the summer; she would never believe his story.
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  • Let's say you have established a story as true. Now you establish that it doesn't matter - she would still never believe it is true. There isn't anything hypothetical here (from either the subject or narrator's point of view). We just have two facts that are incongruous. Notice that if we switched to reported speech it just becomes a back shifted would, but if we switched to quoted speech, the would changes to will. So this is something that happens with narration. It's one way to handle incongruous statements by presenting them like universal truths using modal would.
    – Phil Sweet
    Commented Aug 7 at 19:25
  • @PhilSweet The hypothesis is not relative to the story, but instead it is relative to telling her the story ( "(If you told her) She wouldn't believe it"): In the hypothesis you told her she wouldn't believe it. If you replace "would" by "will" in the full sentence, then the resulting sentence sounds off. As you use "will" there cannot be either an understated nor overt hypothesis that she should be told; the understated assumption is that "when" she is told the fact she will not believe it. The two concepts are in close (1/2)
    – LPH
    Commented Aug 8 at 1:41
  • @PhilSweet proximity, that is true. We can verify this fact in the German "wenn" which means both "if" and "when". Let's remark again the effect of tense mismatch in "When you tell her she wouldn't believe it."; "will not" is right, here. It seems to me that you confuse "He said that she wouldn't believe it." (backshift, which is actually but a tendency, as "He said that she does not believe it." is correct and means the same thing) with "If you told her she wouldn't believe it." (hypothetical marker "would", present "does not" sounds awfully off). (2/2)
    – LPH
    Commented Aug 8 at 1:41

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