# EN: If you do this, your mother would have my head [sic]



## Bad_Mood

Bonjour,

Quelqu'un pourrait-il m'expliquer la raison de la non symétrie "conditionnel" (si on peut l'appeler ainsi) du "do" à l'indicatif et du "would" marqué du trait du "conditionnel" si j'ose m'exprimer ainsi? Et pourquoi ne pas avoir: "will have my head"?

Merci d'avance pour vos réponses.


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## yannalan

A mon avis, mais je n'en suis pas sûr, on ne peut pas mettre de conditionnel après "if" en anglais non plus.


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## Bad_Mood

On peut le marquer au passé par contre: If you did this...mais mon problème n'est pas là. 
I wonder why after a indicative if-clause, we have a principal with a "would" and not a "will".


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## yannalan

Justement, dans la principale on peut utiliser "would", alors on le fait.


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## Bad_Mood

Merci, mais sans chercher la petite bête, mais en français, la non symétrie me gène un peu (cela ne concerne peut-être que moi...) : "Si tu fais ça, ta mère me couperait la tête." Au lieu de "Si tu fais cela, ta mère me coupe la tête" ou "ta mère me coupera la tête".


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## OLN

La phrase "If you do this, your mother would ..." est pour moi aussi incorrecte.

Lire cette discussion :First & Second Conditionals Mixed???

Règles ici : 
http://www.perfect-english-grammar.com/conditionals.html
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/conditional2.htm (plus en détail)


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## Bad_Mood

Merci pour vos précisions!


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## mpatricksweeney

By my read, the example sentence is bad. We use past-then conditional or present-then future.  For example,     
(Hypothetical) If I ran/were to run the marathon, I would be tired.  (Not: If I run the marathon, I'd be tired.) 
Present: If I run the marathon, I'll be tired.
I think your question reflects AmEng speakers' discomfort using the subjunctive.  It's rarely used and sounds stiff.
Most proper is: "If I were to break the window, my mother would have my head."  This form is rarely heard.  
The alternative past-conditional is often used: "If I broke the window, my mother would have my head."  (If I had broken the window, mom would have had my head.)  
In the present: "Be careful!  If you break the window, my mom will have your head."
"I can't go out.  If I don't finish my homework, mom will have my head."


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## Tim~!

mpatricksweeney said:


> I think your question reflects AmEng speakers' discomfort using the subjunctive.  It's rarely used and sounds stiff.
> Most proper is: "If I were to break the window, my mother would have my head."  This form is rarely heard.
> The alternative past-conditional is often used: "If I broke the window, my mother would have my head."  (If I had broken the window, mom would have had my head.


You're not quite correct in your analysis there. It's not the case that "most correct" is "if I were to ..."

What you're referring to as "the past" _is_ in fact a subjunctive. It's just that in its past form it resembles the simple past for all verbs except _to be_, and so we don't notice it! But if you think of the sentence "if I were you, I would ..." (and not "if I _was_ you") you can see it, plain as day.

The on-topic question is, in my opinion, nothing more than somebody deviating from the standard formula. There's no special meaning attributable to it, any more so than when we hear people also say "if you would do this, your mother would have your head". Neither is standard English at all (and the "would ... would" one looks and sounds ugly to me) but the meaning is apparent all the same.


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## Assurancetourix

More likely to be a slip of the tongue or typo than a deliberate but non-standard usage, as far as I can see. My best guess is that it should be i_f I let you do this, your mother would have my head_


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## Bad_Mood

There is a typo in the thread, that's true: there is an "f" missing at _*If*_ and I don't know how to modify it. 

Some precisions though, I've found the following in a monograph _On conditional Again_ (75) edited by Angeliki Athanasiadou and René Dirven (1984): However, *if* federal funds are used, it *would be* entirely appropriate to train workers for jobs which could be obtained elsewhere as well as for jobs in the area of chronic unemployment. (BRO:201)

It seems that these sentences have been investigated saying that, I quote "the speaker tries to be somewhat more distancing in the apodosis than in the protasis." (Athanasiadou, p. 75) Do you sense it like this too?

Moderator note : title has been fixed the way you asked.


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## Assurancetourix

No, I don't personally interpret it that way and I feel that if the speaker was trying to distance himself from the proposition that training would be appropriate he would not have used the intensifier _entirely_.

I can't see any connection between this and the original question. As I say I suspect there is more missing than just the _f _​- where has the phrase come from?

Edit: ironically I made a slip in the first sentence and would normally have written _if the speaker had been trying... he would not have used..._


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## Bad_Mood

Assurancetourix said:


> I can't see any connection between this and the original question.



My idea was to understand why we can have an indicative in the if-clause and a _would_ in the principal.



Assurancetourix said:


> where has the phrase come from?



It's from the monograh I quoted. It only says BRO:201. and BRO stands for Brown corpus. (Brown University Standard Corpus of Present-Day American English): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Corpus


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## Assurancetourix

OK well my gut reaction is that _if you do this, your mother would have my head _is a different kind of sentence from _if you do this, it would be entirely appropriate for the school to expel you_ - but you are obviously right in saying there is an indicative followed by a would. I will give it some thought. It may be something to do with the word appropriate being an opinion / value judgment. I remember a lecturer who had a habit of saying _it is not appropriate for students to XYZ_, always made my hackles rise (too categorical). It would be interesting to find another sentence where the second clause contains a factual consequence but I still think the most likely hypothesis is that the original sentence contains a typo or slip of the tongue. 

On that issue, what I meant to ask was where the original phrase _if you do this... _came from. I believe the BRO reference relates to _if federal funds are used..._

I'm not convinced that the would in _it would be appropriate _really has a conditional value.

For example, you could perfectly well say:

_I have decided that it would be appropriate to waive the charges_ 

I do not sense any _if _hanging in the air here, or any conditions waiting to be fulfilled. The meaning is the same as:

_I have decided that it is appropriate to waive the charges_

Going back to the BRO sentence, you could change it to say:
_
In light of the fact that federal funds are to be used, it would be entirely appropriate to train workers

_In other words, you can get rid of the _if _without affecting the _would_

I suppose another analysis would be that the _would _is conditional but the condition is not the one expressed by the if clause

On this view:

_I__t would be appropriate to train workers_

really means
_
If workers were to be trained, that would be appropriate

_In other words, if you were applying a rule that relates the mood / tense of the verb in the if clause to that of the verb in the then clause, the relevant if clause would be the one implied in _it would be appropriate to train workers_ (which I have given as _if workers were to be trained_) and not the one expressed in the first part of the sentence (which is _if federal funds are used_).

So those are my thoughts for what they are worth. I still think the phrase _if you do this, your mother would have my head _is likely to be a mistake. For me, the _if federal funds are used _sentence doesn't jar nearly so much.


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