WOULD + a wide range of lexical verbs

There is a slight clash of levels in the English Grammar Profile for the following grammar.

A2 point 39 in MODALITY is defined as:

‘would’ with a wide range of verbs to talk about wishes and preferences.

*’the wide range’ can be understood by the example sentences in the EGP which only contain ‘love’ and ‘prefer.’

B1 point 34 in VERBS/patterns is defined as:

‘would prefer’ + ‘to’ infinitive, often for politeness.

*The main difference is that ‘prefer is connected to politeness.  But the way the EGP has it worded, makes it sound as though it is not essential to give this a B1 marker type of status.

On iWeb corpus we did a search for collocates.

WOULD LOVE

1 SEE 38487

  Sioux City Journal

Personally I would love to see movies on the big screen again, but at the same time I have to be adult and be responsible with my money.

2 HEAR 29108
3 WIN 3245
4 THOUGHTS 2993
5 FEEDBACK 2614
6 JOIN 2172
7 PERSONALLY 1157
8 SUGGESTIONS 933
9 CHAT 640
10 OPINIONS 496

WOULD PREFER

1 RECEIVE 820

2 STAY 819

  Bulinews.com

Patrik Schick underlines desire to stay at RB Leipzig

“I would prefer to stay here. We played a great season. I believe in the team, in the coach’s philosophy. I like his football.

3 PERSONALLY 807
4 AVOID 604
5 REMAIN 432
6 IDEALLY 136
7 FULL-TIME 124
8 RESPONDENTS 94
9 PART-TIME 88
10 ENQUIRY 66

Although there is a B1 point for a specific list of lexical verbs to be less direct, such as advise, recommend, imagine, say, we believe being able to use “would” with any wide range of lexical verbs should be a grammar point noted at the B1 level.

Here are the top 100 most frequent lexical verbs following the modal verb ‘would’ in the iWeb corpus:

would _VVI

The 5 most common B1 lexical verbs: recommend, expect, allow, suggest, require

And I would recommend that you not wait

 until you‘re an old guy like me to do it.

listen

In the sentence above, “would” makes the recommendation more polite and less direct. It is also a bit more tentative, suggesting that the speaker is not trying to force their advice on the listener.

The 5 most common B2 lexical verbs: affect, appreciate, assume, cause, enable

Any fallout from his capture would cause a major embarrassment for the government.

listen

In this case, “would” is used to express the possibility that his capture could cause a major embarrassment for the government.  In other words, the sentence is saying that if he is captured, it is likely that it will cause a major embarrassment for the government.