Here’s a very interesting grammar question raised by Forum member English Maiden sometime ago:
“While on the Internet, I stumbled upon the topic of ‘mixed conditionals.’ Before that, I always thought that in unreal conditional sentences, the time in the ‘if’-clause should always match the time in the result or main clause, as in this sentence: ‘If I were pretty, I would have a boyfriend now.’ Now, my question is, are the mixed conditional sentences below acceptable English?
“(1) ‘If I had taken French in high school, I would have more job opportunities.’
“(2) ‘If Mark had gotten the job instead of Joe, he would be moving to Shanghai.’
“(3) ‘If I didn’t have to work so much, I would have gone to the party last night.’
“(4) ‘If I weren’t going on my business trip next week, I would have accepted that new assignment at work.’
“(5) ‘If Dan weren’t so nice, he wouldn’t be tutoring you in math tonight.’
“(6) ‘If Sandy were giving a speech tomorrow, she would be very nervous.’”
My reply to English Maiden: IMAGE CREDIT: WOODWARD ENGLISHYes, the six sentences you presented are all grammatically correct and perfectly acceptable English constructions. The first four are of the type called
third conditional (no possibility); the fifth, the type called
second conditional (unreal possibility); and the sixth, the type called
first conditional (real possibility). I must add that it’s confusing to call such sentences “mixed conditionals,” for there’s really nothing mixed about them or their tenses. They are forthright statements that convey the idea that the action in the main clause could take place only if the condition in the subordinate clause—the “if”-clause—is fulfilled.
So, for starters, how does a third conditional sentence differ from a second conditional sentence?
The
third conditional sentence talks about a condition in the past that didn’t happen, thus making it impossible for a wished-for result to take place, as in Sentence 1: “If I had taken French in high school, I would have more job opportunities.” This type of sentence has the following structure: the “if” clause states the impossible past condition using the past perfect tense “had + past participle of the verb,” is followed by a comma, then followed by the impossible past result in the form “would have + past participle of the verb.” We can see that Sentences 2, 3, 4 are similar third conditional sentences with a wished-for-result that could no longer possibly happen.
The
second conditional sentence, on the other hand, talks about a possible but very unlikely result that the stated future condition could be fulfilled; in short, the stated outcome is an unreal possibility, as in Sentence 5: “If Dan weren’t so nice, he wouldn’t be tutoring you in math tonight.” This type of conditional has this sentence structure: the “if” clause states the future condition in the simple past tense, is followed by a comma, then followed by the future result clause in the form “would + base form of the verb.” The speaker here talks of the very unlikely possibility that Dan would do the tutoring job if he “weren’t so nice.”
The
third type of conditional sentence is the first conditional or real possibility. It denotes a high degree of possibility that a future condition or situation will happen given a hypothetical future condition, as in Sentence 6: “If Sandy were giving a speech tomorrow, she would be very nervous. Here, the speaker believes that knowing Sandy, it’s very likely for her to be “very nervous” when giving the speech.
There’s one more type of conditional sentence:
the zero conditional (certainty). It talks about a condition whose result is always true and always the same, like a scientific fact, as in this example: “If people don’t drink water, they get dehydrated.”
This essay, 776th in the series, first appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the January 28, 2012 issue of The Manila Times
, © 2012 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
