Conditional, past participle, past perfect

Question

"The fallen rock might have gotten you" (fallen on you) - is "might have gotten" considered as conditional, past participle, past perfect, or some combination?

Answer 1

This sentence could be considered to be in the indicative mood (if simply stating a fact) or the conditional mood (if based on some omitted condition, such as, "If you had walked under that cliff, then ..."). In either case, it is written correctly.

Because the sentence describes events in the past and includes a modal auxiliary ("might"), we use the conditional perfect aspect. This consists of the modal verb + "have" + the past participle of the main verb. In this case, the main verb is "gotten" (the past participle of "get").