Here are my thoughts (in black text) regarding your questions (in blue text):
I just found that what I had thought was the Past Unreal Conditional is actually the Present Unreal Conditional.
I am confused since the structure of the Present Unreal Conditional uses the simple past tense:
If ... Simple Past ..., ... would + verb ...][... would + verb ... if ... Simple Past ...]
1) What makes it *present* then? The
past unreal conditional is used to describe imaginary situations in the past; it talks about how, if circumstances had been different, what someone would have done differently or how something could have happened differently. The form for the past unreal conditional is as follows:
[If ... past perfect ..., ...would have + past participle ...]
or:
[... would have + past participle ... if ... Past Perfect ...]
Examples:“If I
had saved enough money by then, I
would have bought that piece of real estate.”
“She
would have married him if he
had not decided to work abroad.”
“If we
had stayed in the Philippines, we
wouldn’t have acquired American citizenship.”
In contrast, the
present unreal conditional is used to describe what someone at present would generally do in imaginary situations. The form for the present unreal conditional is as follows:
[If ... simple past ..., ... would + verb ...]
or:
[... would + verb ... if ... simple past ...]
Examples:“If I
spoke better English, I
would apply for a call center job.”
“We
would live in Vancouver if we
moved to the United States.”
“She
would excel in class if she
didn’t play computer games too much.”
Take note that in the
present unreal conditional, the speaker talks of what he or she (or someone else) would do at the present time under an imaginary or unreal situation. In the
past unreal conditional, on the other hand, the speaker talks of what he or she (or someone else) would have done sometime in the past under an imaginary or unreal situation during that time in the past.
Also, I gathered from a website (http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/IF6.cfm)
some examples of the Past Conditional:
a. If I'd known you were in hospital, I would have visited you.
b. I would have bought you a present if I'd known it was your birthday.
c. If they'd had a better goalkeeper they wouldn't have lost the game.
d. If you had told me you were on the Internet, I'd have sent you an e-mail.
e. Would you have bought an elephant if you'd known how much they eat?
What I'd like to bring attention to is option "C" in particular. Is the contraction of "they'd" = they had? So the sentence reads:
If they had had a better goal keeper, they wouldn't have lost the game.
2) All other examples, save for this one, only show one "had". When do we actually use two "had's" in a Past Conditional Statement?
Yes, the form “they’d” in the sentence “If
they’d had a better goalkeeper they wouldn’t have lost the game” is a contraction of “they had,” so that sentence would read in full as follows:
“If they
had had a better goalkeeper they wouldn’t have lost the game”
We will recall that the word “have” can either be an
operative verb that means “to hold or maintain as a possession, privilege, or entitlement,” as in “to have a car” and “to have breakfast,” or a
verbal auxiliary, in which case “have” or its inflections (“has,” “had”) are used with the past participle to form the present perfect tense (“has taken”), past perfect tense (“had taken”), or future perfect tense (“will have taken”).
When “have” is used as a main verb in a sentence, its past perfect tense takes the form of “had had,” as in “She
had had breakfast by the time we
reached home.” Usually, in sentences using the form “had had” like the example just given here, the trigger for the past perfect are the time subordinators “when,” “until,” and “by the time.”
Here are three more examples of sentences using the “had had” form:
“The lost mountaineers
had had nothing to eat for five days until they
were rescued last week.”
“After
she’d had a nap, she
felt very much rested.”
“If
I’d had another opportunity then, I
would’ve applied for a US visa.”
The thing about the “had had” form is that in many instances, it sounds somewhat awkward when spoken. For this reason, many speakers would rather use its contracted form for ease of articulation, as in “she’s had a nap” and “I’d had another opportunity.” In informal usage, in fact, many people simply get rid of the first “had” and construct the sentence in the simple past tense. Strict grammarians obviously will find fault with that omission, but doing it usually doesn’t seriously detract from the intended meaning of the sentence, as the following sentences show:
“The lost mountaineers
had nothing to eat for five days until they
were rescued last week.”
“After she
had a nap, she
felt very much rested.”
“If I
had another opportunity then, I
would’ve applied for a US visa.”
