Detect conditional tense via spacy?

Question

is there any function/attribute built in spacy to uncover tokens in conditional tense? Or some possible detour to get to those?

Answer 1

Spacy implements POS tagging and dependency parsing. Dependency approach to syntax is more focused on the surface form and the role of single words. I'd say verb tense and mood is on the verge of syntax and semantics and is beyond the scope of dependency parsing. I can't provide you any simple solution but I think that you might be better off using a LFG parser and look for mood and tense in the F-structure (for instance this: http://ioperm.org/lfg-parser.html). There is also a library called pattern that is advertised as able to recognise mood, you can have a look: http://www.clips.ua.ac.be/pages/pattern-en#modality

If you'd like to stick to Spacy then perhaps you could approach the issue heuristically by writing simple rules.