# FR: mixed conditional or mismatched tenses in si-clauses



## cheshire

Do you hear in French what I call the "confused tenses" type of "mixed conditional"?

The latter link explains such grammatical forms in English in which tenses are incongruent between that of if-clause and main-clause. For example,If-clause: Past
Main-clause: Present​What I call "*confused tenses*" is such a type in which tenses are incongruent between that of if-clause and main clause. In addition, tense in the main-clause has no relevance with that of if-clause. This is what I call "confused tenses."From what I've learned so far, French is very rigid in the congruence department. I'm wondering if it can be heard in relaxed conversations.

EDIT: I propose another type of grammatical point which would be worth looking into.

I occasionally find in English what I call "confused moods" in which the mood in if-clause is incongruent with that of main-clause.

if-clause: indicative
main-clause: subjunctive​Is it also possible in French?


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## Grop

Le plus courant dans une discussion informelle, c'est sans doute:

présent indicatif -> présent indicatif
"Si tu lui donnes la main, il te prend le bras."

présent indicatif -> impératif (présent)
"Si tu vas à la plage, n'oublie pas la crème solaire."

Plus que parfait indicatif -> conditionnel passé
"Si j'avais su, j'aurais pris du pain."

Imparfait indicatif -> conditionnel présent
"Si j'étais toi, je n'achèterais pas cette camelote."


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## mnewcomb71

cheshire, can you please provide some concrete examples of what you are looking at?  I know that it will definitely help me to grasp what you are saying.


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## cheshire

Example of "if-clause: present; main-clause: past":
You know, if you were paying attention to your assignment, it wouldn't have happened.

Example of "if-clause: indicative; main-clause: subjunctive":
If I had enough money, I would have bought a house. This is an example of English sentences, and wondered if the simipar case exists in French.

Thanks!


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## mnewcomb71

I disagree with your statement concerning the if-clause being in the present. It is in the past tense, and not the plus perfect, so the main clause needs to be in the conditional.

You know, if you were paying (past tense) attention to your assignment, it would not happen.
Tu sais, si tu faisais attention à tes devoirs, ceci ne se produirait pas.

If you want to use the past conditional, you need to say:

If you had been paying attention (or, Had you been paying attention) to your assignment, it would not have happened.
Tu sais, si tu avais fait attention à tes devoirs, ceci ne se serait pas produit.

As for your second option of if-clause indicative and the main clause in the subjunctive, I disagree again.

Had I had enough money, I would have bought a house.
Si j'avais eu assez d'argent, j'aurais acheté une maison.

If I had enough money, I would buy a house.
Si j'avais assez d'argent, j'achèterais une maison.


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## cheshire

Tu sais, il y a deux types de "past tense."

1: *manipulative *past tense ("past" only in appearance)
2: *substantive *past tense ("past" in its meaning)

I meant in the sense of 2, you 1.


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## Thomas Tompion

Hi Cheshire,

You won't be surprised to hear that I think that sentence, if you were paying attention to your assignment, it wouldn't have happened is incorrect. It should be if you had been paying attention to your assignment, it wouldn't have happened.

The basic sequence of tense rules seem to me the same in French as in English:
Present - Future: If he comes, I will see him - s'il vient, je le verrai
Imperfect - Conditional: If he came, I would see him - s'il venait, je le verrais

This carries over into the use of auxiliaries:
Imperfect of auxiliary - Conditional of auxiliary: If he had come, I would have seen him - s'il était venu, je l'aurais vu.

This is not to disallow some of the cases already mentioned e.g. If he comes, I see him - s'il vient, je le vois.


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## Annalees

But if you wanted to say something like "If, in general, you were paying attention to your assistant, what happened yesterday wouldn´t have happened", would it be incorrect to say "If you were paying attention to your assistant, it wouldn't have happened"? Would you have to put a simple past and say "If you paid attention to your assistant, it wouldn't have happened"


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## mnewcomb71

It needs to be:

If, in general, you had paid attention to your assistant, what happened yesterday would not have happened.

Had you paid attention (or Had you been paying attention) to your assistant, it would not have happened.


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## jann

I have followed this thread off and on and have now thought of a hypothetical example of this "confused" tense use in an if-then phrase.

A friend who lives on the other side of the country is going to visit her mother in City A.  City A is 3 hours away from me in City B.  Unfortunately, my schedule is very busy during her visit, and I do not have time to drive 6 hours round trip to visit her at her mother's home.  Consequently, I will not be able to see my friend this time. Speaking with my friend on the telephone before her trip, I say,

_If City A and City B were closer, we would have been able to (could have) seen each other!
_
I would never say "_If City A and City B had been closer..."_ (pluperfect) because this condition is valid in the present, and the visit I am speaking of would (if it happened) occur in the future.

I wouldn't say _"..., we could see each other"_ (present conditional) because I know this cannot come to pass, and putting it in the past conditional ("could have seen") is a statement of finality that confirms we will not see each other.

So I end up mixing my tenses in English, and it is very natural.  It is not really a grammatical problem (in my mind), and chosing the tenses in such a way conveys the nuance I have mentioned above:  
_If the cities were (past) closer, we could have (past conditional) seen each other.


_And yet, in French, it would be strange to mix the imparfait with the past conditional!
(_Si les deux villes étaient à côté, on aurait pu se voir_) ??!!
Is this sentence even possible, or does it sound very strange?

Should I rather say
_Si les deux villes avaient été à côté, on aurait pu se voir_ 
(it seems very strange to put the entire sentence in the past when it is meant to refer to a FUTURE condition?!)
or
_Si les deux villes étaient à côté, on pourrait se voir_ 
(The conditional "pourrait" seems to leave open the possibility that we will see each other, but I wish to underline that it is regrettably impossible for us to see each other!)


I hope I've explained myself clearly!  Thanks for any light you can shed on this.


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## Maître Capello

jann said:


> And yet, in French, it would be strange to mix the imparfait with the past conditional!
> (_Si les deux villes étaient à côté, on aurait pu se voir_) ??!!
> Is this sentence even possible, or does it sound very strange?


This sentence looks perfectly good to me except that I wouldn't say _à côté_ but _plus proches_:

_Si les deux villes étaient plus proches, on aurait pu se voir_.​
In fact had I to choose one, I'd pick up either this one or the next (my preference goes to the next):

_Si les deux villes avaient été plus proches, on aurait pu se voir._​
At any rate, *given the context you provided*, _Si les deux villes étaient plus proches, on pourrait se voir_ is incorrect in French as well for the exact same reason you mentioned, namely:


> The conditional "pourrait" seems to leave open the possibility that we will see each other, but I wish to underline that it is regrettably impossible for us to see each other!


In short, I guess it's quite the same in French as it is in English.


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## Thomas Tompion

Hi Jann,

Don't you think that it sounds OK because it's an impossible condition, and so you are using the subjuntive, not an indicative tense at all.  I'm not clear that you are mixing up your tenses at all in English.  Your background story set up a situation in which the conditional was dealing with an impossibility - the towns being closer.  Drop that circumstance and I think the ordinary rules apply.


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## jann

Hi Thomas,

You know, came to the same conclusion about the English sentence as I reread my post after submitting it!   But my question was really about the proper construction in French, and about "breaking" the standard _plus-que-parfait --> conditionnel passé_ structure for the if-then clause.... so I figured I'd just leave it.


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## Outsider

It seems to me that it all comes down to two basic structures, in French as in English:


*If + present + then + present*
*If + subjunctive + then + conditional*
The (past) subjunctive, which often indicates a hypothetical condition, is probably what Cheshire meant by "manipulative past".

Perfectivity is independently determined by the context.


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## jann

> It seems to me that it all comes down to two basic structures, in French as in English:
> *If + present + then + present*
> *If + subjunctive + then + conditional*


I'm not sure I understand you properly, Outsider, because I can't figure out a way to interpret your post as anything other than an oversimplification. 

In French, there are four standard _if-then _structures (excluding literary tenses), none of which appear in your list, and none of which include the subjunctive mode.  A fifth possibility exists, but has a slightly different meaning.
Si + présent, + futur
Si + imparfait, + conditionnel
Si + plus-que-parfait, + conditionnel passé
Si + présent, + impératif
(Si + présent, + présent) = whenever X, then Y (NOT "if")
In English we use the same four principal structures, but we also add more flexibility, the so-called "confused" or "mixed" tenses that cheshire mentions.
If + present, then + present (in a way that does NOT mean "whenever X, then Y")
If + subjunctive, then + conditional or past conditional
combinations involving the progressive
So my question is then, what is the most natural way to render in French the _meaning_ conveyed by an English sentence that uses [if + subjunctive, then + past conditional]?  None of the French structures seem to describe an impossible present situation and its impossible future result.  Maître Capello suggests that this is a case where a native speaker might use a "mixed/confused" structure, combining the imparfait with the conditionnel passé.

Any other opinions?


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## Outsider

jann said:


> In French, there are four standard _if-then _structures (excluding literary tenses), none of which appear in your list, and *none of which include the subjunctive mode*.


You're right, I made a mistake. I should have written:


_If_ + present + _then_ + future or present
*If + past + then + conditional or past*
I realise that a more detailed list would also include the pluperfect and so on, but these two rules still apply so long as you look at the auxiliary verb instead of the main verb, when the tenses are compound. The word "then" may be absent in some cases.



> So my question is then, what is the most natural way to render in French the meaning conveyed by an English sentence that uses [if + subjunctive, then + past conditional]? None of the French structures seem to describe an impossible present situation and its impossible future result.


It would depend on the context. However, a natural candidate is the second structure above.


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## cheshire

JamesM suggested that "mismatched tenses" is better than "confused tenses."
Thanks for enriching this discussion.


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## itka

jann said:


> So my question is then, what is the most natural way to render in French the _meaning_ conveyed by an English sentence that uses [if + subjunctive, then + past conditional]?  None of the French structures seem to describe an impossible present situation and its impossible future result.  Maître Capello suggests that this is a case where a native speaker might use a "mixed/confused" structure, combining the imparfait with the conditionnel passé.
> Any other opinions?



I agree with you jann. 
To answer your last question, here are some examples of "impossible present" and "impossible futur result" :

_Si nos deux villes avaient été plus proches, j'aurais eu le temps de venir te voir _(aujourd'hui/hier/demain/pour Noël/l'année prochaine/l'année dernière...) 
but you can also say :
_Si nos deux villes étaient plus proches, j'aurais le temps de venir te voir_ (no matter when, always true).

_Si le soleil brillait la nuit, on y verrait comme en plein jour._ (vérité générale, intemporel)

In these cases, the tense is of no importance at all, anyway, the condition is impossible (now, yesterday or to-morrow)

And a joke you can hear in France, to say that you're talking of something impossible, that you can only dream :
_Si ma tante en avait, on l'appellerait mon oncle...
_Do you guess what "*en*" stand for ?


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## Mikamocha

To revive this thread...can one say Si+present+ conditional? Si tu rates le bus tu devrais attendre le bus suivant ? In English, if you miss the bus you SHOULD wait for the next bus?


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