Breakdown of Zawsze byśmy mieli nieograniczony budżet.
mieć
to have
zawsze
always
budżet
budget
by
would (free conditional particle: można by, trzeba by)
nieograniczony
unlimited (boundless, unrestricted)
Questions & Answers about Zawsze byśmy mieli nieograniczony budżet.
Why is byśmy attached to zawsze instead of the verb?
In Polish, the conditional particle by (along with personal endings like -śmy) is highly mobile. While it often attaches to the verb (zawsze mielibyśmy), it can also attach to the first stressed word in the clause to emphasize it. Here, attaching it to zawsze places special emphasis on the fact that we would always have that budget.
If byśmy takes the ending, what form does the verb mieli take?
The verb is left in the third-person past tense form. Because the first-person plural ending -śmy has moved to the conditional particle by, the verb is stripped down to mieli (the third-person plural past form for masculine personal groups). If a group of women were speaking, the sentence would be zawsze byśmy miały.
Could I attach byśmy to the word nieograniczony instead?
No, the floating conditional particle usually attaches to the very first stressed word in the clause (like conjunctions, pronouns, or adverbs such as zawsze), or it stays attached to the verb. Moving it into the middle of the sentence onto an adjective breaks this structural rule and sounds completely unnatural.
Why is the object nieograniczony budżet in the accusative case? Don't conditional sentences sometimes change this?
Conditional sentences only trigger the genitive case if the verb is negated (for example, nie mielibyśmy budżetu). Since this sentence is affirmative (mieli), the direct object stays in the accusative case. For a masculine inanimate noun like budżet, the accusative form is identical to the nominative.
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