<p>Which one of these sentences is correct? </p>
<p>My poor father, who was in the Irish army, would have loved to have seen this.
My poor father, who was in the Irish army, would have loved to see this.</p>
<p>The second choice sounds much better, but the first appeared in a recent Time magazine, although it was in a quote.</p>
<p>Uh the first sentence means that he doesn’t like it anymore, because its in the unreal past conditional, but other than that, it is correct.
The 2nd is just wrong. Because it has the “would have loved” part, it is in the past, unreal conditional tense. A present infinitive is used to show that it happened in the past. Since it is loving, and the loving is in the past, the seeing must also be in the past, or else he wouldn’t have loved it in the first place. The to see must be in the perfect infinitive, which signifies that the infinitive happened before the verb.
If you wanted to say that the father did and still loved seeing the thing, you would need the past real conditional, which is would love. That means that he loves it, and still does to the present. Still, in this instance, the infinitive must be to have seen. The present infinitive cannot be used for actions that happened in the past in relation to the verb of the sentence.</p>
<p>Thanks for the detailed reply!</p>
<p>Ah…I am sorry, but maybe the 2nd sentence might be correct also after looking at it again. Though it is in the past, I would assume that the dad loves it the moment he sees it, so it could be to see…In this case, unless there is another signifier when this happened, both are correct I think.</p>
<p>sorry for double post, but if the sentence had on “, but he died last year”, then a time period is created. Since it is in the past, to have seen would be the more correct choice, The liking happened in the past, albeit being unreal, and the seeing would have to happen before as he died in the past and would need to designate that he saw it before he died? I am sorry, now I am just confusing myself…would anyone else clarify?
EDIT: found out from an expert that you should just use the present infinitive after “would have liked”…the present infinitive is too ambiguous…</p>
<p>sorry for triple post…I am sure I am breaking the rules or something, but I want to get this out.
The perfect infinitive after a past conditional is impossible, unless the seeing must have happened before the loving. Like maybe something that would have taken a long time to realize before he loved it. Okay…I am done…</p>