As Damkerng Ti pretty much gave you in the comment, “as” in this case means: “like ” (prep. 2 b) or “since ” (conj. 3)?

As an individual from a foreign country, how do I get

to be free?

Despite two well-written and well-taken, good questions, my answers are very opinionated. I have based this theory on my own experiences.

I know two factors are at play in this site but mostly they’re physical ‘tough’ and ‘nice’. When the verb introduces the topic, we have the verb introducing the subject (or topic). In your examples these are both plural nouns so “are” seems to come naturally. How come nouns are surrounded by quotation marks, since “topic” refers to the concept rather than the plurality of nouns? With this logic applied to plants, we should

use “is”: “Eatable flowers” is

a subject. This doesn’t look great and is certainly not best practice, but could be valid given the above logic!

Second factor is the one you specifically asked about. Typically, after a word like “subject” or “topic”, we must use the singular verb form since we are now referring to the singular word “subject” or “topic”. What subject is? I immediately said “comes up” each time. I’m a jive. Voicing what you say out loud, I know there are you, too. I think the plural form sounds out of place as my ear is concentrating on “subject” rather than “eatable flowers” or “tools.”

This is a form of 3rd conditional (which combines “If + past perfect/past modal ideal conditional, note, your example has the clauses reversed).

Why is the if clause necessary on the second part of the language? The addition of the meaning of “could have” adds an extra layer of “imaginary situation”.

If the firefighters hadn’t arrived = The firefighters arrived And The home could have

burned = The home didn’t

burn

Note that “could

have

burned” indicates that there was

only

a chance for it

to burn if the firefighters hadn’t come.

I think the sentence sounds better (second part of your question) if we say:

The home could have burned (down), had the firefighters not arrived.

I can’t seem to justify having “been burned” as a passive structure that sounds cool. Also I’ve been reading that

there’s a passive structure somewhere else.