Learn English – maybe you don’t already know that/maybe you don’t know it yet

1. I’m sure all of these variations are commonly used and understood to mean roughly the same thing. “I would have thought…” essentially means “I believe you should have understood what I meant,” or “that should be obvious.” “I thought that was obvious” is a simple declaration that sounds more like the speaker actually gave the matter some thought.

2. “I should [not “would”] have known,” means that she realizes, after finding the boys, that she should have expected to find them where she did. “I knew you would be here” is similar, but means that she went straight to wherever she found the boys based on her knowledge of their habits. Both phrases might imply some disapproval of their being there. “I would know” (or “I should know”) is not a possible substitute for your sentence. As a complete clause, it’s more like “you can take my word for it,” or “take it from me,” implying some experience of a situation, often said ruefully or with a little chagrin.

3. “I don’t/wouldn’t know”: There wouldn’t be much reason to answer “I don’t know”; it’s more direct to just say that you weren’t there. “I wouldn’t know” might be employed where there’s some displeasure, like if B thought he should have been invited to the party but wasn’t. The “would” in “I wouldn’t know” is present tense; “I wouldn’t have known” is not possible here because it puts it in the past tense.

I don't know what you know.

The sentence is ambiguous in terms of its meaning because it's ambiguous in terms of its syntax too.

It is possible that the string what you know is a fused relative here (a special kind of relative clause construction sometimes also known as a free relative). In this case the string what you know is a noun phrase. It represents an entity. These kinds of fused relatives with what can be paraphrased using the words the thing(s) that. We can paraphrase the fused relative reading of the sentence (and make it slightly clearer by adding the word same) like this:

• I don't know the same things that you know.

In this reading of the sentence we can consider the simple object of the sentence (as opposed to the full grammatical object of the sentence) as the pronoun what. This word represents the actual thing which is unfamiliar, unknown, to the speaker.

Alternatively, the string what you know could be read as an interrogative clause. In this case, if the you concerned was called Bob, for example, the sentence would mean something like:

• I don't know the answer to the question: What does Bob know?

[I used Bob in the sentence above because the deixis of you could cause further problems here]

Here the whole interrogative clause what you know represents a question, the answer to which is unknown to the speaker.

Grammars like The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language give detailed analyses of the different structures of fused relatives and interrogative clauses. The most pertinent difference is that—according to their analysis—in the fused relative reading what you know is a noun phrase (a phrase headed by a noun or pronoun, in this case the word what) , whereas what you know in the interrogative reading is an interrogative clause (and therefore ultimately headed by a verb, in this case the verb know).

There is a nice test you can do, which will tell you whether an item is a fused relative or an interrogative clause. In the interrogative clause reading you can add the word else after the what and the sentence will still make sense and still be grammatical (although it will have changed its meaning somewhat). So the following sentence can only have the interrogative reading:

• I don't know what else she knows.

The sentence above can only mean:

• I don't know the answer to the question: What else does she know?