Questions tagged [conditionals]
An independent clause that refers to a hypothetical situation contingent on another set of circumstance.
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What is this conditional? [duplicate]
The next morning Dodo was driving me to Silent Hill, and if I was to run away before it was too late, now was the time.
So, why not_ now would be the time_, so it would be second conditional? Or it ...
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Mid-sentence phrase where you need 1 of 2 things but could also have both as well
I have been losing sleep over this, I have used this string of words before but can not think of it the best way I can describe it is in the title I believe it uses a combination of “if, and, or” and ...
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What part of a subjunctive sentence is actually in the subjunctive?
In my studies of French I noticed the subjunctive mood is talked about almost exclusively in the context of dependent clauses which take the form of "que/qui + verb in the subjunctive". It ...
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Tense usage in counterfactual conditionals with non-counterfactual clauses
Imagine the following situation:
My superior is to come with an inspection is a few hours. The visit is expected to be quite unpleasant and therefore I write to my absent coworker to urge him to come:
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Is the irrealis 'were' used in the dependent clauses of conditionals?
I'm already aware that directly inside of an if-clause, it is common to use the irrealis 'were.' Take the following sentence for example:
If he were taller, he might walk faster.
My question is ...
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Present simple or future conditional
While writing a research proposal, I encountered the following issue. Consider the following two variants:
Present simple:
I would like to measure X. Finding evidence that X is large is helpful to ...
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Dependent clause comma (Following an independent clause)
I rather hope this is not too basic a question for this forum (or that it is erroneous altogether!)
We have this sentence:
Keith did not know what to make of this apparatus, if it was meant to ...
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tense of that-clause in conditional
I was writing a comment under a video about a series which I used to watch ten years ago. I was writing that if I were watching them for the first time today, I would not enjoy as much as I did years ...
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Why is the subjunctive mood considered tenseless? Is "would be able to" not explicitly a future (perfect) construction?
I've read through the responses on this question, but I don't feel like they address the idea that English subjunctive clauses lack inflection (per Wikipedia).
I'm looking at this sentence, for ...
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I would like to understand a sentence in 'The Catcher in the Rye' [closed]
I am having trouble following correctly this part of the book as to its logic it refers to.
M'boy, if I felt any better, I'd have to send for the doctor...
At first, it says under condition that if ...
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Third conditional rules. I believe I came across a mistake in an english teaching book [duplicate]
I came across this sentence in "American English file 3" and I'm wondering if it's written incorrectly or if there's something I don't understand about the third conditional:
"If I'd ...
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Does "If someone should do" stand for "if by any chance someone does" or "if by any chance someone did"?
"If you should find that book, could you keep it for me?"
Such a sentence could be said to contain
a first conditional (hypothetical but probable)
"If, by any chance, you find that ...
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Two Infinitives in a Row, but Dropping “To”?
Was just thinking about English vs. Spanish and thought about the following sentence:
“We can try to run”
In Spanish, I believe this translates as:
“Podemos intentar correr”
In Spanish, intentar and ...
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A comma before "if"
So, I have a sentence,
You can show it to him, if you haven't done it already.
My reasoning for this comma is that I don't really put a condition per se before my interlocutor, I'm merely saying &...
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Conditional structure – “hadn't have gone”? “hadn't have met”? [duplicate]
Recently I saw two interviews, one with Victoria Beckham, the other one with Elton John. They were talking about their past experiences and that's the phrasing they used:
But it wouldn't have ...
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