# If she was standing....when he was struggling....would be



## Phoebe1200

_NCIS_
(A woman and her fiancé were on a date. Her fiancé got shot and she claims that they were attacked by someone. So first she's being treated as a witness but later on, the evidence reveals that she was the one who killed him)

*Forensic scientist:* If she was standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound.
There's nothing there.


I know that the _"when he was struggling with the killer"_ part refers to an actual, real event that happened and I have no problem with that.
But I can't figure out this _"if she was standing ". _Is it hypothetical or is it also real, like_ "and if she was standing behind him like she said she was"_?

Please help.


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## johngiovanni

Clearly the forensic scientist does not believe that she was standing behind the Captain when he was struggling.
That may be called a "past non-factual condition", I think.
If (past non-factual condition), then (consequence).
Since there is no evidence of the  expected consequence (the blood spatter on a particular part of her body), she was not standing behind the Captain when he was struggling.


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## Glasguensis

It's an unreal situation in the past.


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## VicNicSor

You didn't mention the fact that she showed how things happened using mannequins and photos of the woman's dress. By which she, like, brought the whole event into the present. And the second speaker says "There*'s* nothing there".


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## Phoebe1200

VicNicSor said:


> You didn't mention the fact that she showed how things happened using mannequins and photos of the woman's dress. By which she, like, brought the whole event into the present. And the second speaker says "There*'s* nothing there".


I didn't really think it was that important, but thanks for adding to the context.


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## Phoebe1200

johngiovanni said:


> If (past non-factual condition), then (consequence).





Glasguensis said:


> It's an unreal situation in the past.


Is _"if she was standing" _the same as _"when he was struggling with the killer"_?


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## johngiovanni

Phoebe1200 said:


> didn't really think it was that important


You are right.  It wasn't important- as we natives have both said,  Without _any_ additional context about mannequins and photos of the woman's dress, we knew that this was  an "unreal" / "non-factual" situation in the past.
There is a clear reference to the present evidence (or lack of evidence) in the sentence of the OP.
I do not understand:
Is _"if she was standing" _the same as _"when he was struggling with the killer"_?

Clearly, it is not the same.  I do not know how to express it more clearly than I did in post 2.  She was _not_ standing behind him - and if she said she was, she is lying.  The evidence does not "back up" the claim that she was standing behind him.


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## Phoebe1200

So _"if she was standing " _is *not *the second type conditional sentence here?


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## johngiovanni

I am not into terminology, really.  I expressed it as a "past non-factual condition".  I could have expressed it as a "past counter-factual condition".  Glasguensis expressed it as an "unreal situation in the past".
Whatever terminology you want to use, she was not standing behind him when he was struggling with the killer.


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## VicNicSor

johngiovanni said:


> It wasn't important


I still think it's important. "If she was standing" and "when he was struggling" are not the same, of course, because the former is part of a second conditional: "If she *was/were* standing .......  the blood spatter *would be* ..."
If it weren't for the photos and mannequins, it would be a story about an event in the past and then it would be changed into a third conditional.


johngiovanni said:


> Without _any_ additional context about mannequins and photos of the woman's dress, we knew that this was an "unreal" / "non-factual" situation in the past.


Why is it not then a third conditional? I mean, if it's an unreal situation in the past


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## johngiovanni

OK.  Call it a third conditional.  "If I had time, I would follow this up.  But I don't."  (Third conditional, apparently).

Edit: This is not a third conditional, as pointed out later in this thread. Sorry to mislead anyone.


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## Oddmania

I'm not sure I understand what's going on with those second and third conditionals, and what change the photos and mannequins are supposed to make. I understand the sentence the way Johngiovanni and Glasguensis seem to have understood it, that is _"If she was indeed standing behind the captain as she claimed she was, then..._".

It's different from "_If she stood behind the captain, the blood spatter would be_..." (which would be a pure conditional sentence, like _If I were rich, I would eat in Paris every night_).


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## Kirusha

What Vic means is why is it not: " If she had been standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would have been here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound."?

I'd say that in the forensic expert's speculation, his thoughts are directed towards the future, not the past. He's speculating rather than giving a definitive answer.


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## johngiovanni

Oddmania said:


> and what change the photos and mannequins are supposed to make



Quite.  We did not need the additional information.  She was not standing behind the Captain when he was struggling.


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## johngiovanni

Kirusha said:


> I'd say that in the forensic expert's speculation, his thoughts are directed towards the future, not the past. He's speculating rather than giving a definitive answer.



I disagree.  He is clear that the lack of blood spatter on her front left shoulder  (as evidenced in the present)  is a clear indication that she was not standing behind him when he was struggling.  He is very clear.


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## Kirusha

What I'm trying to say, tying it to the numbered conditionals familiar to all learners of English but invariably baffling to native English speakers, is that the expert is not questioning some particular past situation (had been, would have been - third conditional), but is rather formulating a more general claim about the likelihood of the blood spatter appearing in some place (was, would be - second conditional). Roughly, assuming that whoever was standing here, the blood spatter would be there. I hope that makes sense.


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## VicNicSor

Oddmania said:


> _"If she was indeed standing behind the captain as she claimed she was, then..._"


Then _what_?... What follows the statement is essential.
1. If she *was standing *behind the captain as she claimed she was, then *why don't we see* the blood spatter here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound?

2. If she *was standing* behind the captain as she claimed she was, then* the blood spatter would be* here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound.

Now, those are two different instances of "*was standing*", do you agree? In '2' it's a second conditional.


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## Oddmania

I fail to see the distinction, Vic.

To me, the conditional would only come into play if "_If she_ + verb" refered to something that hasn't happened yet. For instance, "_If my assistant stood / would stand right behind me, we would be able to recreate the scene_" (which is equivalent to "_If my assistant stands / will stand right behind me, we'll be able to recreate the scene_").

I don't understand "_If she was standing_" as a conditional statement, because it's clearly embedded in the past, as indicated by "_when he was struggling with the killer_". It's just the *past *tense to me.


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## Thomas Tompion

johngiovanni said:


> OK.  Call it a third conditional.  "If I had time, I would follow this up.  But I don't."  (Third conditional, apparently).


Hi Johngiovanni.

I fully agree with your analysis of this problem, but please don't forget that many learners are taught three basic forms of conditional.  In other words, the third conditional is a technical term for a different form altogether, so I'd beg you NOT to call your sentence a third conditional.

The third conditional would be  _If I had had time, I would have followed it up_ - ie. an unfulfilled condition in the past, and the consequence (at that time in the past) had it been fulfilled (past perfect in the if-clause, past conditional in the main clause).

Your sentence - _if I had time, I would follow it up_ - is a standard second conditional, a so-far-unfulfilled condition and its consequence should it be fulfilled (perfect in the if-clause, conditional in the main clause).

This is usually the moment when someone, unhelpfully in my view, says they don't think learners should be taught the three basic forms.

I think Kirusha is right to say that the forensic scientist meant was _If she had been standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound_.  This is a standard mixed 3rd/2nd conditional (past perfect in the if-clause, conditional in the main clause), appropriate for a condition in the past and the present consequence of its having being met.

In this case, as you point out, Johngiovanni, the present consequence isn't to be found (no blood on the left shoulder), so the condition cannot have been met - she wasn't standing behind the captain when he was struggling with the killer.


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## johngiovanni

Kirusha said:


> I hope that makes sense.


I'm sorry, I don't really understand your post, but I do understand Thomas Tompion's post, I agree with what he is saying, and I will say no more on the subject.  I will take Thomas's advice: my sentence in post 11 is not to be taken as a third conditional.


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## VicNicSor

Oddmania said:


> I don't understand "_If she was standing_" as a conditional statement, because it's clearly embedded in the past, as indicated by "_when he was struggling with the killer_". It's just the *past *tense to me.


But she was *not *standing there.


Thomas Tompion said:


> I think Kirusha is right to say that the forensic scientist meant was _If she had been standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound_. This is a standard mixed 3rd/2nd conditional (past perfect in the if-clause, conditional in the main clause), appropriate for a condition in the past and the present consequence of its having being met.


Kirusha by that suggested what Vic meant, it being "blood spatter *would have been*", not "*would be*", though. 
But then if the expert meant "If she *had been standing*", why did she say "If she *was standing*"?


Kirusha said:


> but is rather formulating a more general claim about the likelihood of the blood spatter appearing in some place (was, would be - second conditional). Roughly, assuming that *whoever was standing here*, the blood spatter would be there. I hope that makes sense.


I agree! But again, the part in bold is a condition, "the blood spatter would be there" is the consequence, hence, the standard 2nd conditional, isn't it?


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## Thomas Tompion

VicNicSor said:


> But again, the part in bold is a condition, "the blood spatter would be there" is the consequence, hence, the standard 2nd conditional, isn't it?


No, it isn't, I'm afraid, because the second conditional is not concerned with a single event in the past and the present consequences of its having occurred.

That is the province of the mixed 3rd/2nd conditional.


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## Kirusha

In this case, it should have been: "If she had been standing here, the blood spatter would be there" rather than "If she was standing here, the blood spatter would be there". The question, as I see it, is whether this is an instance of loose talk (there was another thread where some people said they would have preferred the past perfect to the past simple in the conditional clause) or a justified use of the second conditional (where "she" refers not to a particular person but to any hypothetical person standing in that particular spot).


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## Glasguensis

As Thomas has explained, I thought very clearly, this is a justified use of mixed 2nd/3rd conditional. To be honest I question the usefulness of teaching these conditional types to learners, since they don't cover all circumstances and it seems difficult for learners to grasp that.


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## Thomas Tompion

Kirusha said:


> In this case, it should have been: "If she had been standing here, the blood spatter would be there" rather than "If she was standing here, the blood spatter would be there". The question, as I see it, is whether this is an instance of loose talk (there was another thread where some people said they would have preferred the past perfect to the past simple in the conditional clause) or a justified use of the second conditional (where "she" refers not to a particular person but to any hypothetical person standing in that particular spot).


Hi Kirusha,

This agrees with what I said earlier (post #19) - it's a normal mixed III/II conditional.  I said I agreed with you there.

The II conditional is inappropriate here, in my view.

I didn't understand what you meant by 'she' referring to any hypothetical person, or see its relevance.  She surely refers to the woman in the OP.


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## Kirusha

Glasguensis and Thomas, teaching conditionals is a hard job. I have no issue with this sentence and most probably would not have even taken much notice of it but if a student asked me to explain it I would have to come up with something that could be related to the standard model (three basic conditional types plus two mixed types). Could you please help me get one thing clear. Let's consider the if-clause of a conditional sentence (either type 3, or type 3/2). Is it ever in the past simple or past continuous? All the grammar reference books I'm aware of, associate the past perfect or the past perfect continuous with the 3-d type conditional if-clause. What am I missing here?

In a nutshell, where's the difference between:
a) If she was standing here, the spatter would be there.
b) If she had been standing here, the spatter would be there.

Thomas, if I understand correctly what you say above, you'd regard the original sentence as loose talk, with the past continuous replacing the past perfect continuous.


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## Thomas Tompion

Kirusha said:


> Glasguensis and Thomas, teaching conditionals is a hard job. I have no issue with this sentence and most probably would not have even taken much notice of it but if a student asked me to explain it I would have to come up with something that could be related to the standard model (three basic conditional types plus two mixed types). Could you please help me get one thing clear. Let's consider the if-clause of a conditional sentence (either type 3, or type 3/2). Is it ever in the past simple or past continuous? All the grammar reference books I'm aware of, associate the past perfect or the past perfect continuous with the 3-d type conditional if-clause. What am I missing here?
> 
> In a nutshell, where's the difference between:
> a) If she was standing here, the spatter would be there.
> b) If she had been standing here, the spatter would be there.


_Let's consider the if-clause of a conditional sentence (either type 3, or type 3/2). Is it ever in the past simple or past continuous? All the grammar reference books I'm aware of, associate the past perfect or the past perfect continuous with the 3-d type conditional if-clause. What am I missing here?_ You are missing nothing.  It's always in the past perfect, or the past perfect continuous.

The difference is this:

_a) If she was standing here, the spatter would be there _leaves open the possibility that she was standing there: this possibility is closed in _b) If she had been standing here, the spatter would be there._


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## Kirusha

Thomas Tompion said:


> _Let's consider the if-clause of a conditional sentence (either type 3, or type 3/2). Is it ever in the past simple or past continuous? All the grammar reference books I'm aware of, associate the past perfect or the past perfect continuous with the 3-d type conditional if-clause. What am I missing here?_ You are missing nothing.  It's always in the past perfect, or the past perfect continuous.
> 
> The difference is this:
> 
> _a) If she was standing here, the spatter would be there _leaves open the possibility that she was standing there: this possibility is closed in _b) If she had been standing here, the spatter would be there._



I suppose we essentially agree about the import of his words. I, unsuccessfully, wanted to get the same idea across in N13: with the choice of "was" over "had been" he's not ruling out the possibility that she might indeed have been standing there (the reason I called it speculation), he's not definite in his own mind at the point of utterance about her location at the time of the crime. If you accept this, then interpretation-wise we are on the same page. Where we disagree is how to label this construction. I would still contend that by formal criteria it's a straightforward conditional II.

_a) If she was standing here, the spatter would be there  - _I find the whole set-up distinctly odd but perhaps there is a way how the spatter could have ended up where it is even if she was standing here.
_b) If she had been standing here, the spatter would be there - _There is no way she was standing here, the spatter pattern is totally inconsistent with her standing there, things don't work that way in our world.

Doe this make sense?


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## Thomas Tompion

You put forward two sentences:

_a) If she was standing here, the spatter would be there_ - Second conditional.
_b) If she had been standing here, the spatter would be there_ - Mixed III/II conditional.

I don't agree with your interpretation of a. in this context, Kirusha.  _There's nothing there_ we are told: therefore sentence b) is the appropriate form.  The scientist has made a common elementary mistake in using the Second conditional.

You cannot say _if she was standing there_, when you have shown logically that she cannot have been standing there; it needs to be _if she had been standing there_.

_She was not standing there, but if she was standing there _is a nonsense.  We'd say _but if she had been standing there_.


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## Kirusha

Thanks for you comment, Thomas. Can we conclude then that "was standing" is loose talk here, although apparently the use of the past simple or the past continuous instead of the past perfect or the past perfect continuous in the conditional clause is becoming a tendency in spoken English (AE specifically?)? 

PS We might have been at cross purposes as I was abstracting away from the "There's nothing there" qualification.


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## Phoebe1200

Hi, Thomas.
I'm a bit lost here. First you say you agree with what Johngiovanni says



Thomas Tompion said:


> I fully agree with your analysis of this problem,


and then


Thomas Tompion said:


> The scientist has made a common elementary mistake in using the Second conditional
> it needs to be _if she had been standing there_.


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## Thomas Tompion

Hi Phoebe,

Johngiovanni had at that stage, I thought, outlined the circumstances which make _if she had been standing there_ necessary.  It is necessary, in my view, for the reasons I have given, several times.


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## Phoebe1200

Thomas Tompion said:


> Johngiovanni had at that stage, I thought, outlined the circumstances which make _if she had been standing there_ necessary.



OK, but what he actually was insisting on is that there's nothing wrong with using_ "if she was standing"_ and that it is a simple past tense. And not just him, Glasguensis and Oddmania seemed to agree with him.


Oddmania said:


> I understand the sentence the way Johngiovanni and Glasguensis seem to have understood it, that is _"If she was indeed standing behind the captain as she claimed she was, then..._".





Oddmania said:


> It's just the *past *tense to me.


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## Thomas Tompion

I've done my best for you, Phoebe, and given you reasons for my views.

I'm not prepared to say anything more in this thread.


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## Loob

I hesitate to join in. But it seems to me that
_If she was standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here ... _
is definitely not a second conditional, because the "was standing" refers to past time.  (The "was" is also, incidentally, not replaceable by the past subjunctive "were".)

I also don't think it's loose speech: as TT says in post 27, it's different from the equivalent sentence with _If she had been standing..._ because it leaves open the option that she was standing.

It seems to me that the speaker is mentally postulating two options, although he only actually says one of the options out loud:
_Either she was standing behind him then, or she wasn't.
~ If she was standing behind him then, there would be blood on her left shoulder now. 
~ If she wasn't standing behind him then, there would not be blood on her left shoulder now. _

He then draws a conclusion:
_There isn't any blood there now, and therefore she wasn't standing behind him._


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## JulianStuart

Loob said:


> It seems to me that the speaker is mentally postulating two options, although he only actually says one of the options out loud:
> _*Either she was standing behind *him then, or she wasn't.
> ~ If she was standing behind him then, there would be blood on her left shoulder now.
> ~ If she wasn't standing behind him then, there would not be blood on her left shoulder now. _
> 
> He then draws a conclusion:
> _There isn't any blood there now, and therefore she wasn't standing behind him._



I also don't use terms like conditional and unreal and so on but I would describe these as "speculation"-al


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## Kirusha

Loob said:


> I hesitate to join in. But it seems to me that
> _If she was standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here ... _
> is definitely not a second conditional, because the "was standing" refers to past time.  (The "was" is also, incidentally, not replaceable by the past subjunctive "were".)



I can't get this example out of my system now. What would you say to its being an elliptical second conditional?

_If it were true that she was standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here ..._


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## Loob

I would say...
... to be honest, Kirusha, it would be much simpler to accept that the universe of _If_-sentences isn't bounded by the traditionally-taught Zero/First/Second/Third/Mixed Conditional categories.  These  may represent the most common patterns; but there are lots of well-formed _If_-sentences which don't fall into any of them.


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## Kirusha

Which means that if I'm ever asked a question like that by a student, I'll have to go into hiding. (It'd be nice to have a label, though.)


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## Loob

No, really - I think we're doing a disservice to students if we let them believe that all _If-_ sentences can be shoehorned into one or another of the traditionally-taught Types.
I'll see if I can find a label, but to be honest I'm not optimistic.


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## Kirusha

That would be fabulous. It seems to be a pretty common pattern but I have no idea how to pigeonhole it. Are these instances of the same?

If he poisoned her, he would flinch at the mention of arsenic.
(He would flinch if you mentioned arsenic - conditional II)

If he wrote this letter, he would now be in his office waiting for us.
(We would find him in his office if we went to look for him there - conditional II)

Ok, it's not a conditional "if" (maybe, I'm still hung up on the idea of ellipsis), but I do want to pin it down.


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## Thomas Tompion

Loob said:


> there are lots of well-formed _If_-sentences which don't fall into any of them.


It might be added that there are a lot of _if_-sentences formed by natives which don't fall into any of them, and are badly formed - ie. not really sentences where the main clause is truly contingent upon the _if_-clause.

The great advantage of the basic forms as taught is that, properly used, they avoid the common mistakes, and provide a framework for basic tense-sequencing in conditional sentences, which is one of the more intriguing, and, for some, elusive problems facing learners of the language.


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## Loob

TT, I'm not at all sure I agree that sentences where the main clause is not truly contingent upon the _if_-clause are necessarily "badly-formed". I'm also not at all sure that the present example falls into the category of 'sentences where the main clause is not truly contingent upon the _if-_clause_'._
That said, you and I have often disagreed about conditionals in the past, and I'm sure we will  do so again in future.


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## Thomas Tompion

Loob said:


> TT, I'm not at all sure I agree that sentences where the main clause is not truly contingent upon the _if_-clause are necessarily "badly-formed". I'm also not at all sure that the present example falls into the category of 'sentences where the main clause is not truly contingent upon the _if-_clause_'._


Hi Loob.

I'm amused; I'd tried to form my sentence in such a way that neither of these two things was implied.


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## Phoebe1200

Kirusha said:


> If he poisoned her, he would flinch at the mention of arsenic.
> (He would flinch if you mentioned arsenic - conditional II)
> 
> If he wrote this letter, he would now be in his office waiting for us.
> (We would find him in his office if we went to look for him there - conditional II)
> 
> Ok, it's not a conditional "if"


Hi, Kirusha.
What do you mean by _"it's not a conditional *"if"*_?


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## Thomas Tompion

_If she was standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here _certainly has the form of a second conditional sentence - perfect in if-clause/conditional in the main clause.

It sounds correct to several fastidious native speakers.

My view is that this is a fair use of the second conditional, which doesn't have to be limited to speculation about future events, but can be applied to the impact of past events on the present.


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## Kirusha

Phoebe, there are "if"- sentences which only look like the first conditional but which do not, in fact, formulate conditions whose fulfillment the main clause would contingent upon. I can name at least two types:

1) If it'll make her happy, I'll buy her a washing machine.
2) If she won't be here anyway, we might as well get started.

It could be something along these lines. When I have a minute I'll try to see if Swan has anything to say about it.

We thus have three options:
1) a subtype of the second conditional 
2) a malformed conditional 3 (but acceptable in colloquial speech)
3) not a conditional sentence masquerading as the second conditional

Take your pick.


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## Glasguensis

@Kirusha, I'm sure it's not your intention but I think you're simply confusing things. There is no doubt that the OP is indeed a conditional, and I agree with TT that it is a perfectly well-formed and valid conditional. Given that there is no authority in English which defines grammar - the various guides are the opinions of the authors and they don't always agree - what constitutes acceptable grammar can almost be defined to be what seems acceptable to a sizeable number of educated native speakers. The overwhelming view on this thread seems to me that this is a grammatically correct conditional and not one of the other scenarios you have described.


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## Kirusha

Glasguensis, I think everyone agrees about the meaning of the sentence, which is totally straightforward, but I'm not sure the same is true of how it should be analyzed in grammatical terms (it may not matter much in the big picture of things but it's simply interesting for some people). To merely call it a conditional gets one nowhere from the point of view of typology. What type of conditional? And here we have quite a diversity of opinion.



Thomas Tompion said:


> the second conditional is not concerned with a single event in the past and the present consequences of its having occurred.



is contradicted by 


Thomas Tompion said:


> My view is that this is a fair use of the second conditional, which doesn't have to be limited to speculation about future events, but can be applied to the impact of past events on the present.



which in turn is incompatible with



Loob said:


> is definitely not a second conditional, because the "was standing" refers to past time. (The "was" is also, incidentally, not replaceable by the past subjunctive "were".)


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## siares

Interesting opinions, and for me the only way I can read the sentence more or less comfortably is based on:


VicNicSor said:


> the fact that she showed how things happened using mannequins and photos of the woman's dress. By which she, like, brought the whole event into the *present*. And the second speaker says "There*'s* nothing there".


In my opinion the speaker inadvertedly mixed space and time.
Imagine a small-scale map:
If, instead of the old shop, a tall office building was standing here (-taps on a map), we would see a shadow here (indicates position of shadow on the map). 
If a woman was standing behind the struggling captain (indicates 'here' by pointing at figurines), we would see a blood splatter mark here (indicates the position of the mark in the picture).
This is hypothetical and gives information about space only; adding time by not using the adjective 'struggling' but a time-ridden verb form makes it very difficult to read.


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## Glasguensis

Kirusha said:


> To merely call it a conditional gets one nowhere from the point of view of typology. What type of conditional? And here we have quite a diversity of opinion.


I know little about linguistics, but I've never seen a generally accepted typology of conditionals in English which goes beyond the 0,1,2,3 categories. So I don't know how you would identify a category for this sentence unless you define it yourself. Incidentally, to me your washing machine and get started examples are in fact conditionals. 

@siares - I view the time/space mixing as deliberate here. This is something which is perfectly acceptable in English in this context.


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## Loob

I promised to try to find a "label" for the _If_-sentence in the OP, which doesn't fit into any of the traditionally-taught Types zero/1/2/3.

Here are three PowerPoint presentations by an American linguist, Ron Cowan:
Factual conditionals;
Future conditionals
Imaginative conditionals

Cowan divides If-sentences into:

*1.  Factual conditionals*
Factual conditionals express a fact and can themselves be divided into:
- timeless:
..... generic {present-present} _If we heat water, it boils._ *(This is the traditional "Type 0".)*
..... habitual {present-present or past-past}: _If she plays bridge with him, they always lose; if she wanted to go skiing with him, that's what they did._
- time-bound: If-clause indicates an event that is bounded in time. The result clause refers to an action or event that can be logically inferred from this.
..... implicit inference {present-present}_ If we can save the bald eagle from extinction, we can certainly ensure the survival of all endangered species._
..... explicit inference {wide range of tenses can be used in both clauses; modal verbs <must, should>, + <be… probably, likely>, often used} _If it’s still snowing _
_out there, my car must be covered. If the door was locked, then the thief must have come through the window._
​*2. Future conditionals*
Future conditionals express a future action or event that will occur, provided the contingency in the if-clause is fulfilled.
- {if-clause present, main clause future} _I will call him if I have any questions. _*(This is the traditional "Type 1".)*
- {if-clause present, main clause command, permission, request} _If I sleep in, wake me up please._

*3. Imaginative conditionals*
- hypothetical: an event that is unlikely but nevertheless possible or present states which don’t exist
{if-clause past simple, main clause _would/could/should/might + _inf_} If I were you, I would help her._ *(This is the traditional "Type 2".)*​- counterfactual: event or state that didn't happen in the past
{if-clause past perfect, main clause _would_ + perfect inf_}_ _I would have helped her, if I had been there. _*(This is the traditional "Type 3".)*​
It seems to me that the sentence in the OP falls neatly into Cowan's *Factual - explicit inference* category.  So perhaps we can call it an "inference conditional".


-------

PS.  I just thought I ought to add that the bolded comments *(This is the traditional "Type 0/1/2/3")* are mine, not Cowan's.
​


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## VicNicSor

I thought of it as a 2nd conditional from the beginning and still think so


Loob said:


> It seems to me that the sentence in the OP falls neatly into Cowan's *Factual - explicit inference* category. So perhaps we can call it an "inference conditional".



_



			If it’s still snowing out there, my car must be covered. If the door was locked, then the thief must have come through the window.
		
Click to expand...

_I see a significant difference between the two above and the OP. Being still snowing and the door being locked are plausible assumptions, while in the OP, her standing behind the Captain is unreal. The same applies to the consequences


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## Loob

OK, Vic, we'll have to agree to differ.


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## siares

Glasguensis said:


> I view the time/space mixing as deliberate here.


Thanks.
Could you or others try find an example from literature, where this is not a representation of spoken language? With three verbs in different modes?


VicNicSor said:


> I see a significant difference between the two above and the OP. Being still snowing and the door being locked are plausible assumptions, while in the OP, her standing behind the Captain is unreal.





Loob said:


> _If it’s still snowing __out there, my car must be covered._


I agree with Vic, I cannot compare these two at all: 'if it door were locked doesn't work; 'if she were standing' does for me.
Forensic expert says, pointing at physical evidence:
(Edit: these sound wrong to me!)
_If it’s still snowing out there, my car must be covered. But, as you see, it isn't covered, so it cannot be snowing.
If the door was locked, then the thief must have come through the window. But, you see (on the camera), he didn't come through the window, so the door must have been not-locked.
_


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## Loob

Siares, "If she were standing" could only refer to the mannequin's present position.  The speaker in post 1 isn't talking about the mannequin's present position; he's talking about the real woman's past position. "Was" in "If she was standing..." refers to distance in time, not to distance in probability.


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## Loob

Just looking at this sentence





siares said:


> Forensic expert says, pointing at physical evidence:
> _If it’s still snowing out there, my car must be covered. But, as you see, it isn't covered, so it cannot be snowing._


it's really very similar to the sentence in the OP.
Let's put the snow into the past tense:
_If it was snowing half an hour ago, my car would be covered. But, as you see, it isn't covered, so it can't have been snowing half an hour ago._


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## siares

Loob said:


> Siares, "If she were standing" could only refer to the mannequin's present position.


Yes, that is how I am imagining it. 
We have an immobile mannequin of a struggling captain.
Somebody's holding a mannequin of the woman and moving her around the struggling captain as they explain the inferences:
If anyone were standing here (behind the captain) we would see X.
If anyone were standing here (in front of the captain), we would see Y.

Loob, I long for 'had been' in the snow half an hour ago...
Interestingly, that lead me to find a pretty sentence with 3 verbs:
_And if it had been snowing – like the forecast said – there wouldn't be any footprints going in, would there?_
(Colin Dexter, Secret of Annexe 3)


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## VicNicSor

siares said:


> _If it’s still snowing out there, my car must be covered. But, as you see, it isn't covered, so it cannot be snowing.
> If the door was locked, then the thief must have come through the window. But, you see (on the camera), he didn't come through the window, so the door must have been not-locked._


Loob was faster, I wanted to say that with your "but, as you see" addition, the first parts need some fixing too


Loob said:


> it's really very similar to the sentence in the OP.


But you can't add the "but as you see" part to Cowan's example without changing them...

"If the door was locked" is not an unreal condition and "then the thief must have come through the window" is a very likely consequence.

x-posted with siares
_
_


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## Loob

siares said:


> Loob, I long for 'had been' in the snow half an hour ago...


Yes, I know you do, siares.

If you say "If it had been snowing half an hour ago" , you've already decided that it wasn't snowing half an hour ago.

If you say "If it was snowing half an hour ago", you're picturing two different scenarios (scenario 1 = it was snowing; scenario 2 = it wasn't snowing) and considering the logical consequence of each.

--------

PS.  I've seen your edit to post 55.  I agree the first pair of sentences looks a bit odd; the second, though, looks absolutely fine.


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## johngiovanni

I see he sentence in the OP as a "controversial" case of a mixed conditional - one of  those "unreal" conditional sentences whose time in the if-clause is different than the time in the main clause.
In this case the difference in time is that the time in the "if" clause is in the past and the time in the main clause is present.

In such sentences, we expect the "had" forms in the "if" clause, so in the OP sentence, "If she had been standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound" would be what we would expect.

However, the OP sentence uses the past continuous "was standing"  instead of the past perfect continuous "had been standing". Now, you can see that as a grammatical mistake, if you like, or you can see it as a fairly natural, alternative version of this type of mixed conditional.  I know we are dealing with an unreal happening (she wasn't standing behind him), but the time "when she was standing" was the same as the time as "he was struggling".  They would have been two continuing actions in the past.  It is not like "If she had been standing behind him when he was shot", where there is a particular event which happens while something else is going on.   Nor is it a case of one particular event happening before another in the past, as in "If she had run away before he was struggling".  In the case of the OP sentence, I can see that that the "she was standing behind him" and "he was struggling" are contemporaneous, so the use of the past continuous in both "she was standing" and "he was struggling" does not seem strange, unless you insist that a prescriptive grammar rule has to be followed.  If there were no "if" clause - if we looked at a possible statement, the tenses in "She was / wasn't standing behind him when he was struggling" would be perfectly natural.

The sense of the OP sentence has been perfectly clear from the beginning: since there is no evidence of the expected consequence (the blood spatter on a particular part of her body), she was not standing behind the Captain when he was struggling.


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## siares

Loob said:


> Yes, I know you do, siares.
> If you say "If it had been snowing half an hour ago" , you've already decided that it wasn't snowing half an hour ago.
> If you say "If it was snowing half an hour ago", you're picturing two different scenarios (scenario 1 = it was snowing; scenario 2 = it wasn't snowing) and considering the logical consequence of each.


You are right, I've un-decided and now picturing two different scenarios and inferences I long for the future tense in the 'then' clause:
_If it was snowing half an hour ago, my car will be covered. Let's go check. Aah - it isn't covered, so it can't have been snowing half an hour ago._
The 'will' is more parallel to 'must' in Cowan than 'would' would be. But, and I'm considering this for the first time, this is the 'polite' 'would'. In that case, I get the snow scenario.

Cowan's snow is a predictions about present (about state of affairs lasting now) based on the past. The car is now as we speak of it covered in snow.
OP is similar, but it includes prediction about past. The woman doesn't now have blood on her left shoulder as a consequence of murder. We are just looking at a picture of it.
Cowan: If she was standing in the snow (half an hour ago), her hair would be wet (now).
OP: If she was standing in the snow 2 weeks ago, her hat would be wet (then), and in this picture (now).

Even not thinking about the above,
I still think it isn't the past tense, because the technician is not making predictions of one of two equally plausible outcomes, but demonstrating the thinking on how the one prediction was excluded and the other one retained:
Snow scenario: We haven't looked at any evidence yet. If she was standing there where she says she was, we will find evidence of it - we will see a blood splatter in specific place. Give me that picture - no mark ergo she wasn't standing there.
OP scenario: We have evidence, we studied it and reached a conclusion, I am going to tell you and demonstrate with mannequins what it is: If she was standing (=scenario he knows didn't happen)....


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## VicNicSor

Loob said:


> Siares, "If she *were *standing" could only refer to the mannequin's present position.  The speaker in post 1 isn't talking about the mannequin's present position; he's talking about the real woman's past position. "*Was*" in "If she was standing..." refers to distance in time, not to distance in probability.


You mean that it does matter whether she says "were" or "was"... I think what really matters is what follows it, as I said in #17.

1. If the door* was locked*, then the thief *must have come* through the window.

2. If she* was standing *behind the Captain ....... then the blood spatter* would be* here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound.

"Must have come" and "would be" are what make "was locked" and "was standing" different. "Was locked" is about the past, "was standing" about the present, grammaticlly... IMO


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## siares

It occurred to me that if the woman had died of heart attack after captain was killed, I would be happy with the would.
She is a corpse in a morgue and she still has the blood marks on her.
_If she was standing in position X, the marks would be on her left shoulder. Let's go check _where precisely they are.
She is alive and blood marks have been washed off, I would prefer:
_If she was standing in position X, the marks would have been on her left shoulder. Did anyone take a picture of her at crime scene? Let's go see._

Edit: Xpossted with Vic: the 'would have been' I would see as mark of the past as he sees 'must have come'.

Edit 2: well I changed my mind radically. If someone is doing something in a picture, it is always present. (usually described in continuous tense which the verb 'be' doesn't have)
So as a result of past occurrence, she is now forever wearing the blood mark on her shoulder in the picture.

_If she was standing behind the captain, there would be a blood splatter on her shoulder in the picture_ - let's go check the picture! (This of course, doesn't fit the OP context, where they know from a start there was no splatter)

Similar to the Cowan's snow example (as put into the past by Loob).


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## Kirusha

Loob, you are a genius. Many thanks for that.  If I was smart enough, I would have said right from the outset: the OP sentence bears some superficial resemblance to an imaginative hypothetical conditional but actually is a factual inferential conditional.  Labels do make things look really neat. A lovely riddle.


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## Loob

Ouf, Kirusha!

I've been meaning for ages to look for a description of_ if_-sentences that includes, but goes beyond, the traditional Types 0/1/2/3.  Cowan's may not be the best one, but it does meet the requirement.

I'm now off to google "factual inferential conditional".


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## Thomas Tompion

I hope that what Loob has very interestingly explained will not lead learners to distrust the traditional I/II/III format, which gives many learners what is, in my view, a sensible and comprehensible introduction to conditional sentences.

The fact is that when you write an if-clause and intend a main clause to be contingent upon it, you enter a world where rules of tense-sequencing apply, and you ignore those rules at your peril.

For me the advantage of the traditional system is thus:

1.  It gives learners something they can easily remember and which covers many of the cases they may wish to express.
2.  It sends up storm cones for more experienced speakers: when someone doesn't follow the rules of tense sequencing, he is likely to be producing a false conditional, of which there are many: it's likely that his main clause is not contingent upon his if-clause.

It's worth remembering that the original sentence in the OP - _If she was standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound_ - does follow the rules of tense sequencing of the II conditional.


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## Loob

TT, I really don't have a problem with the traditional zero/1/2/3, provided people aren't led to believe those are the only possible forms.


Thomas Tompion said:


> ... It's worth remembering that the original sentence in the OP - _If she was standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound_ - does follow the rules of tense sequencing of the II conditional.


Yes - the key difference is that:
~ the past tense refers to past time, not present or future time.
~ the past indicative is not replaceable by the past subjunctive.


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## siares

If she was standing in the snow 2 weeks ago, her hat would be wet.

Loob, could you say something about my self-speculations - can you confirm that it is necessary for the result to be in present for the sentence to work?
Or
does the sentence still work if the hat might have been wet then, but we know that there is no physical possibility whatsoever for it to be wet now?


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## Thomas Tompion

We seem to agree very much about this, Loob, almost indecently so.

We had rather a similar discussion in this thread - Verbs in counterfactual condition clauses indicative

Around posts 31-41 we came to very similar conclusions.


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## Loob

siares said:


> If she was standing in the snow 2 weeks ago, her hat would be wet.
> 
> Loob, could you say something about my self-speculations - can you confirm that it is necessary for the result to be in present for the sentence to work?
> Or
> does the sentence still work if the hat might have been wet then, but we know that there is no physical possibility whatsoever for it to be wet now?


Yes, you're right, siares - for the sentence to work the hat would have to be wet at the time of speaking.

_If she was standing in the snow 2 weeks ago, her hat would be wet [now].
If she was standing in the snow 2 weeks ago, her hat would have been wet [then]._


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## VicNicSor

I feel I'm missing something here Could anyone please show me what makes you think the "was standing" (instead of "had been standing/had stood") is correct in these two sentences?:

If she *was standing* in the snow 2 weeks ago, her hat would be wet [now].
If she *was standing *in the snow 2 weeks ago, her hat would have been wet [then].


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## Loob

Vic, I think the bottom line is that with  "If she had been standing..." you know you're talking about something that didn't happen; with "if she was standing...", you're saying "let's assume for a moment that she was standing and explore the logical consequence of that_"_.


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## siares

Thank you, Loob!



VicNicSor said:


> If she *was standing* in the snow 2 weeks ago, her hat would be wet [now].


Friday:
A and B are talking:
Oh, we can't move the stupid piano by ourselves! John lives close, let's call him and ask him to help us, he's always willing to help with stuff like this!
Didn't he run the XY marathon in the morning though? He was mentioning that he's thinking of enrolling but I don't know whether he ended up doing it.
Because if he did run the marathon 6 hours ago, he would be too tired for any moving jobs.


VicNicSor said:


> If she *was standing *in the snow 2 weeks ago, her hat would have been wet [then].


C and D are talking a day later:
Oh, look, the piano has been moved! A and B  left a note saying they moved it all by themselves. Why didn't John help? Selfish bastard!
Don't be so quick to diss him! Didn't he mean to run the XY marathon? Because if he did run the marathon yesterday morning, he would have been too tired to help move stuff in the evening. So he might have a good excuse.

Vic, I am very stubborn and I still think you might have been right and the OP sentence is in the present.

See thread TT linked to: (which talks of a specific sentence, not generally)


Wordsmyth said:


> *It's the "would" that inescapably makes it a 2nd conditional. *After that, "was", in the _if_-clause, must have the same sense as "were". Or if you don't accept that construction, and you want "was" to be as in the first set of examples above, then the verb in the main clause shouldn't be "would".


(This is for 'would' about past condition)
which continues to say that the above is true UNLESS
1) would refers to habitual action in the past- inapplicable to one-off murder scenario
2) would is used old-fashionedly for past tense of 'be willing to' in the past- inapplicable to will-less splatter

And - even if the OP sentence (was standing) isn't in the present as most agree, the second part, 'blood marks would be' must be in the present (see Loob's wet hat), and the only way they could be in present in an investigation after the murder case is we are looking at a photograph/figurine.
So I think rather than the extra context provided by you being unnecessary as some suggested in this thread (cries for: less context!), it is paramount.


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## JulianStuart

I have followed some of this, although I was never taught about the apparently rigid rules given to learners about "conditionals". I don't find this example so unusual and would have expected the teaching materials to acknowledge its existence if not explicitly give explanations like those illustrated by Loob.  Given all the police procedurals and detective series appearing on TV recently, I would not be too surprised to see this form get a new name one day (I proposed speculational above)


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## Loob

(Siares, the excellent Wordsmyth post you quote is arguing that "would" can't be used for "was willing on a single occasion in the past".  And he's right.)


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## siares

Yes, I didn't mean to misrepresent that and added that it was about specific sentence. There are more general examples in the same post and in the whole thread, which in my opinion show that it is not impossible for OP to be a 2nd conditional. 
Perhaps I misunderstood why Thomas linked to that thread.


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## Loob

Structurally, it's not impossible for the OP sentence to be a 2nd conditional.  If it were a 2nd conditional, though, the meaning would be:
_If the woman-mannequin were standing behind the Captain-mannequin now, there would be blood in the photo I'm looking at._
Which (a) doesn't make sense and (b) is irreconcilable with "when he was struggling with the killer".


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## siares

Loob said:


> _If the woman-mannequin were standing behind the Captain-mannequin now, there would be blood in the photo I'm looking at._
> Which (a) doesn't make sense and (b) is irreconcilable with "when he was struggling with the killer".


a)
I mixed thoughts before, I don't know whether it was photos or mannequins!
Photos fit the scenario of past tense, not the one of contrafactuality.
There it would have to be a mannequin: taps the woman mannequinn on the shoulder - saying the blood mark would be _here_ - this place I am touching.
from _this_ exit wound - taps the struggling captain figurine.
Vik, can you give more details?
b)
I think it could be lose talk: Starting with one thought, then remembering a detail one wants to add and forgetting the beginning.


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## Glasguensis

Yes siares, it *could* be what you describe as loose talk. But it happens to be a perfectly valid form, and it equally *could* be the factual - explicit inference type as Loob suggested.


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## VicNicSor

siares said:


> Because if he did run the marathon 6 hours ago, he would be too tired for any moving jobs.


... he would be too tired for any moving jobs if we asked him.


siares said:


> Because if he did run the marathon yesterday morning, he would have been too tired to help move stuff in the evening. So he might have a good excuse.


... he would have been too tired to help move stuff in the evening if they had asked him.
I see those like that I mean, I don't see the green parts as part of the conditionals.



Loob said:


> Vic, I think the bottom line is that with "If she had been standing..." you know you're talking about something that didn't happen; with "if she was standing...", you're saying "let's assume for a moment that she was standing and explore the logical consequence of that_"_.


If you're assuming for a moment something that you're sure didn't happen it's an unreal condition (past or present) in any way. The speaker's words:
"I don't think she was standing where she said she was standing when the captain was killed. As a matter of fact, I know she wasn't."
I can imagine a situation. The forensic scientist hasn't seen the woman's dress yet and doesn't know whether there's blood on it or not. She would say: "If she* was standing* behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter* must be* on her front left shoulder from this exit wound. Let's go and check it".


Loob said:


> Structurally, it's not impossible for the OP sentence to be a 2nd conditional.  If it were a 2nd conditional, though, the meaning would be:
> _If the woman-mannequin were standing behind the Captain-mannequin now, there would be blood in the photo I'm looking at._
> Which (a) doesn't make sense and (b) is irreconcilable with "when he was struggling with the killer".


Not in the photo, the speaker points to the mannequin's shoulder representing the woman while saying the phrase, and then points at the photo too.
Besides, when she says the phrase  "when he was struggling with the killer", she digresses for several seconds from pointing at the mannequins, gesturing a "struggle".


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## siares

Glasguensis said:


> it equally *could* be the factual - explicit inference type as Loob suggested.


Yes I know. But maybe I wouldn't call it inference - to infer there is evidence for something...
If X happened, there would be evidence of consequence of X in this picture.
If event X occurred (standing close to blood source), there would be its consequences (splatter) recorded* in this photograph.* (which I am holding in my hand now and which I know already doesn't contain the evidence of any consequence).


VicNicSor said:


> ... he would be too tired for any moving jobs if we asked him. ... he would have been too tired to help move stuff in the evening if they had asked him.


If a tree fell, would it make a sound if there was no-one there to hear it?
I am sometimes too tired to run a marathon even though nobody has asked me whether I am or am not too tired to run a marathon!


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## Oddmania

I'm impressed by Loob's thorough research and explanation! It's much easier to comprehend now.

Vic, when Loob explained the following... :


Loob said:


> Vic, I think the bottom line is that with "If she had been standing..." you know you're talking about something that didn't happen; with "if she was standing...", you're saying "let's assume for a moment that she was standing and explore the logical consequence of that_"_.


... I don't think she meant that "_was standing_" necessarily implies doubt. Of course the speaker is convinced the woman was not standing behind the captain (otherwise she wouldn't say "_the blood would be here_").* However, it does affect the *tone *(but not the meaning). The message becomes _"Let's assume she was actually standing behind the captain: well, nope, that doesn't work. The blood spatter would be here if that was true_".

* If the speaker had not been positive about the woman's position, I suppose she might have said "_If she was standing behind the captain, the blood spatter *will *be here_", but that would also imply that she doesn't know (yet) where the blood spatter really is, but she's expecting to find it '_here_'.

Combining "_had been standing_" with "_will be here_" would obviously not work, though.​


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## Loob

Thanks, Oddmania!  I was painfully typing something to that effect, but you've said it much more clearly and convincingly than I could have done.


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## siares

Oddmania said:


> _"Let's assume she was actually standing behind the captain: well, nope, that doesn't work. The blood spatter would be *here* if that was true_".


Does this work for you for both situations below: 
As the speaker says *here*, he is:
-  tapping left shoulder of the actual woman in a photograph from crime scene
-  tapping left shoulder of a mannequin


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## VicNicSor

We have three options:
1. *Let's assume* she was standing
2.* If* she was standing
3. *If* she had been standing

I see that option '1' would work with "would be"
But to me, "if" is not interchangeable with "let's assume" when it's a speculation about the past and is followed by "would"...
"If" in "If she was standing" is conditional, "let's assume" is not... wrong?

x-posted with siares


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## Kirusha

Vic, do you accept the distinction between factual and imaginative conditionals? Recall that "assuming", "supposing", "suppose", "imagine" can replace "if" in the traditional conditional 2 as well.


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## VicNicSor

Kirusha said:


> the distinction between factual and imaginative conditionals?


My knowledge of conditionals doesn't extend that far, sorry


----------



## Oddmania

@siares There are a lot of posts I would need to catch up on, but I'm guessing the photograph doesn't actually reveal the woman's position, right? (otherwise the whole conversation would be pointless). Then yes, in my opinion, it works in both situations. It probably makes slightly more sense while pointing at a photograph.

@VicNicSor None of us is saying _if _and _let's assume_ are interchangeable. The _past continuous_ tense merely gives the sentence a different flavor.

I think the problem is that it's _relatively _uncommon (in my experience) to find a verb in the past tense ("was") followed by a verb in the conditional mood ("would be"), when the former verb refers to an actual past event (or an actual past non-event, as it were). "_Was_" is usually backshifted into "_had been_" almost automatically.

If he was at the pub last night, how come I didn't see him? 
If he was at the pub last night, he *would *be dead drunk right now. 
If he had been at the pub last night, he would be dead drunk right now. 
If he was at the pub last night, he *will / is going to *be dead drunk *(?)* (if he did drink last night, then the alcohol already kicked in, so it sounds a bit weird to say "_he will be drunk_", as if he wasn't drunk yet. "_If he was at the pub last night, I'm going to find him drunk_" would make more sense, in my opinion).
​I think it just depends on the context and the tone you want the sentence to have. Some contexts are more conducive to such combinations. I think it works fine in the NCIS episode (for the numerous reasons Loob mentioned).


----------



## Kirusha

Loob discusses this in N 52. The word "factual" is possibly misleading here, perhaps we should adopt Julian's "speculational"*. When trying to figure it out, I used the following pair of examples above. Do you see the difference between them:

If he poisoned her, he would flinch at the mention of arsenic. - speculational conditional
If you mentioned arsenic to him, he would flinch. - imaginative conditional (conditional 2)

In the OP this distinction is blurred but as Loob pointed out the sentence fails to pass the subjunctive test.

*I have now corrected this. I first wrote "speculative", modelling it on "imaginative".


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## Kirusha

Oddmania said:


> If he was at the pub last night, he *would *be dead drunk right now.



Oddmania, wouldn't this be another example of a speculational conditional, and therefore acceptable? That is, we are not yet prepared to rule out the possibility that he is capable of going to a pub without getting plastered?

Edit: if the sentence above is acceptable, then as Julain notes there's something odd going on here since there's no acknowledgement of this construction in English language textbooks. Is this something relatively recent?


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## Oddmania

Kirusha said:


> If he poisoned her, he would flinch at the mention of arsenic. - speculative conditional


I'll let native speakers comment on this, but I can understand Vic's (and possibly other people's) confusion about this sentence. The absence of temporal reference (such as "when he was struggling" or "last night") doesn't exactly make it clear that the poisoning is being referred to as a past event.

Wouldn't it be clearer to say _"If he *did *poison her, he *will *flinch at the mention of arsenic"_? (i.e. I expect him to flinch if we are to mention arsenic).


----------



## VicNicSor

Oddmania said:


> If he was at the pub last night, he *will / is going to *be dead drunk *(?)* (if he did drink last night, then the alcohol already kicked in, so it sounds a bit weird to say "_he will be drunk_", as if he wasn't drunk yet. "_If he was at the pub last night, I'm going to find him drunk_" would make more sense, in my opinion).


That's why I used "must be", not "will be" in #81 


Oddmania said:


> I think the problem is that it's _relatively _uncommon


Ok then


Kirusha said:


> If he poisoned her, he would flinch at the mention of arsenic. - speculative conditional
> If you mentioned arsenic to him, he would flinch. - imaginative conditional (conditional 2)


Sorry, but how do these relate to "factual conditionals" in Loob's post #52?...


----------



## siares

VicNicSor said:


> I see that option '1' would work with "would be


Is the 'would' the problem, specifically?
Have you seen in my other post that I think it is the polite speculative would?
- Where is John?
- He would/will/must be in his room.

If John ate the poisoned breakfast, he is/must/will/would be dead now. (rudely, despite nobody having enquired about his status)

I hope native speakers can add more cause I'm unsure, I would never use would like that. (If it was snowing half an hour ago, my car would be covered (now).)



Oddmania said:


> I'm guessing the photograph doesn't actually reveal the woman's position, right? (otherwise the whole conversation would be pointless). Then yes, in my opinion, it works in both situations. It probably makes slightly more sense while pointing at a photograph.


No, the photograph shows her bloodless shoulder (which confirms the position).
Vik confirmed that in the OP, the person is pointing at a mannequin - which, albeit a representation of the woman, could not have been affected by blood in the same way as her photograph could have been.

What do others think about question in #85? @kirusha, @Loob, @Glasguensis, @johngiovanni, @JulianStuart et al.?


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## Englishmypassion

Hello, siares. I am not a native speaker, but I'd give my opinion on that anyway (which will add this really interesting thread to "my threads") . 

I would have expected "had been standing" for the actual photograph taken at the crime scene.


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## Glasguensis

They both work for me.

It's worth bearing in mind that English grammar is descriptive and not prescriptive. If a botanist discovers a new variety of orchid, the orchid still exists even though it doesn't have a name and isn't in a book.


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## Englishmypassion

Glasguensis said:


> It's worth bearing in mind that English grammar is descriptive and not prescriptive. If a botanist discovers a new variety of orchid, the orchid still exists even though it doesn't have a name and isn't in a book.



Hmm, right. We, at least I, have discovered a very colourful orchid here.


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## siares

Thanks Glasguensis!


Englishmypassion said:


> I would have expected "had been standing" for the actual photograph taken at the crime scene.


Thanks, and, had you read the previous 94 posts carefully? Loob says 'had been standing' would have closed the possibility of her having stood, whereas the technician is leaving it open..
Lets see...if the real woman *was* standing behind the captain, there will be* a blood mark on her shoulder *here* (in the photograph/on a mannequin of a woman)  from *this* exit wound (in the photograph/on a mannequin of a man).
OR the contrafactual version:
If mannequin 1 was standing here - (loose speech) - there would be blood on its shoulder here from this blood-squirting exit wound on mannequin 2.

* where the usage of *would be adds a higher level of speculation
All the non-natives in this thread seem to have a problem with it.
I found this thread I remembered the example from, but it is not a conditional - can you think of a thread with example conditionals, EMP?


VicNicSor said:


> In a hospital, David asks a doctor:
> _- Where's the old man who was in this room?
> - Mr. Watson? We took him off life support.
> - Where is he?
> - He *would *be on four or five._



Example of an inferential conditional (the book calls it that) similar to OP, but not containing 'would' - I think the 'would be' might fit in 1), but not in 2):
......You realize what you are saying, don't you? If your step-father HAS been murdered;
_1) if he was murdered BEFORE the theft of the knife, then your mother *is* under far more suspicion, not less.
2) If Reg wasn't in the house at that time, he* isn't* a murderer.*_

*example also mentions 'wasn't as correct option)
Conditionals: A Comprehensive Empirical Analysis Renaat Declerck, ‎Susan Reed -


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## Englishmypassion

siares said:


> Thanks, and, had you read the previous 94 posts carefully? Loob says 'had been standing' would have closed the possibility of her having stood, whereas the technician is leaving it open..



Yes, I have been reading this thread very carefully right from the beginning (that's why I am so confused).
When I read Loob's excellent posts, I fully agree with her including her point on leaving the possibility open, but when I think about the photograph situation freely, it seems that the absence of blood spots there itself closes the possibility of the woman standing behind the captain -- how can we leave the possibility open? Am I missing something?

As for a thread with similar examples, I can't think of any at the moment, siares, but will try my best and post if I find one.
Thanks.


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## Loob

Oddmania's post 83 has the answer, Emp: with "was standing" the speaker is presenting the situation as if there are still two possibilities - although in practice, the speaker knows that there is evidence ruling out one of them.


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## siares

Loob said:


> If she was standing in the snow 2 weeks ago, her hat would be wet [now].


Let's change the 2 weeks to 1/2 hour ago - does this sound OK with 1 or 2 negations, where 'would' is always negated?
If she didn't stand in the rain half an hour ago, her hat wouldn't be wet now.
If he didn't run the marathon in the morning, he wouldn't be tired.
If she wasn't standing behind the captain, there wouldn't be a blood mark on her shoulder.

If she did stand in the rain half an hour ago, her hat wouldn't be dry now.
If he ran quarter of the marathon only in the morning, he wouldn't be tired.
If she was standing in front of the captain, there wouldn't be a blood mark on her shoulder.

I am asking because speculative would sounds more unbearably speculative to me in the negative and I long for the 'won't' even more than in a positive sentence.
Thank you.

I am also interested in AE usage of speculative 'would' - is there any AE speaker there who could comment?


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## Loob

Again, see Oddmania's post 83 for the implications of "would" rather than "will".


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## siares

Loob said:


> see Oddmania's post 83 for the implications of "would" rather than "will".


Sorry to be slow on the uptake, but do those implications go for OP sentence only, or for any sentences in general? Such as:


Oddmania said:


> If he was at the pub last night, he *would *be dead drunk right now.


(We know he wasn't at the pub last night, wink wink)?


Oddmania said:


> ... I don't think she meant that "_was standing_" necessarily implies doubt. Of course the speaker is convinced the woman was not standing behind the captain (otherwise she wouldn't say "_the blood would be here_").* However, it does affect the tone (but not the meaning). The message becomes _"Let's assume she was actually standing behind the captain: well, nope, that doesn't work. The blood spatter would be here* if that was true*_*"*.


The underlined add uses subjunctive.
Could I call OP sentence a hybrid of past open conditional and an elided subjunctive?
Could i call Oddmania's pub sentence that?


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## siares

This is for or all the non-natives who are still struggling, rather than for the satisfied natives.
True open conditionals cannot be in first person, since people do remember what they did (the 'if'), and know what they are doing (the 'then' clause). However, if it is a mere speculation:


Loob said:


> Vic, I think the bottom line is that with "If she had been standing..." you know you're talking about something that didn't happen; with "if she was standing...", you're saying "let's assume for a moment that she was standing and explore the logical consequence of that_"_.


Then it could be applied also to the infamous:
If I didn't act that way, I wouldn't be sitting here

Could you please post examples, when you find them, of the conditionals with 'would' in google books?
Kirusha already said that the construction is missing from grammar books; it would be good to see on paper.
So far I am worrying that it is another thing like 'three times longer than' where speakers use it in 2 ways, but writers in one way only.


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## Thomas Tompion

siares said:


> True open conditionals cannot be in first person, since people do remember what they did (the 'if'), and know what they are doing (the 'then' clause).


I'm sorry, Siares, but this is not the case, in my view.

People don't always, for one reason or another, remember what they did, or have done, and so_ If I was standing there, I would have seen him_ is both an open conditional - it's neutral about whether or not I was standing there (in this respect it's unilike _If I had been standing there, I would have seen him_) - and it's in the first person.


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## siares

Thanks Thomas, my terminology leaves a lot to be desired, I take a Humpty-Dumpty-esque approach.
_
If I was standing there, I would have seen him NOW._
With my edits, I don't know what to call the construction. I asked about a term for it 103.
However, I am not wildly interested in the term.

What I am interested in - I'd like to see quotes in books using that construction.
I'd also like to understand why Oddmania's explanation (in some opinion) works only for OP, and not for sentence in 89 about being dead-drunk.


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## Thomas Tompion

_If I was standing there, I would see him now _is not necessarily an open conditional - it could be a perfectly normal second conditional in which _was_ might be replaced by _were_.  The implication is that you are not standing there.


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## siares

Uhm, the form is the normal conditional, just the context I had in mind for it was different - irreplaceable by 'were'  - it was one of speculation as given in 83: Let's pretend we don't know the reality
a) of the if-clause (I don't know whether or not I was standing there in the past)
and/or
b) of the then-clause (I don't know whether I see him now)

It's the same form as OP: simplified version: _If she was standing there, she would have a stain on her left shoulder now._
or the
_If I didn't act that way, I wouldn't be sitting here now._


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## Thomas Tompion

siares said:


> Uhm, the form is the normal conditional, just the context I had in mind for it was different - irreplaceable by 'were' - it was one of speculation as given in 83: Let's pretend we don't know the reality


You write as though a form of words can be inseparably tied to an individual context.


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## siares

I write with about 7 threads in mind...
I couldn't find any discussing similar case to OP, If he didn't X in the past...he would be Y now
although there were a lot discussing was/were which I was aware of before this current thread - but they didn't equip me to understand the current OP.

_"If I didn't act that way, I wouldn't be sitting right here._" is standard usage, and means_ "If I was not in the habit of acting that way, I wouldn't be sitting right here."_
In your quote above,  the 'didn't act' refers to habitual mode of action..
The sentence is "contrafactual": It is not contested that I did and do act that way.

In OP, there is a 'was', which is not referring to continuing state AND is not decidedly contrafactual: we don't know (or the technician pretends he doesn't know) whether she was or wasn't standing there. We are predicting that if she was standing there then, the stain will be here now. (which we know it isn't)

Once I add a specific point in the past into the 'if' clause in the 'didn't act that way' sentence, we get the form in the OP
_"If I didn't act that way last year, I wouldn't be sitting right here._"

I don't know whether this is still possible in first person, so:
_If he didn't act that way (cautiously) last year, he wouldn't be sitting right here. (he would be dead).
If he did act that way (cautiously) last year, he would be alive and well._

Sentences have the same form, but different contexts
_OP:_
we know the un-truth of the then-clause (we know that there is no stain here): the truth of the if-clause must be determined from the then-clause

_If he didn't act that way last year:_
we know both clauses are untrue: We know that he did act that way, it doesn't need to (and cannot) be determined from the then-clause, his 'sitting right here'.
(But it could be speculated about the same as OP facts are, I suppose)

If you find any discussions on:
If he did X (once) in the past...he would be Y now
Where the truth value of if-clause is unknown and depends on the validity of then-clause
I'd really love to read them.


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## Thomas Tompion

I don't see anything wrong with something like _If he came to the meeting last week, he would now know what we are planning_.

That leaves open the question of whether or not he came to the meeting.

On the other hand, _If he had come to the meeting last week, he would now know what we are planning_ implies that he didn't come to the meeting.


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## siares

Thank you, Thomas!
Yes, that is exactly the case I have in mind, and for which I am seeking
- a term
- examples of usage in written texts

Whether someone knows something or not is never determinable from what he had been exposed to, so I'll change for wound - blood (almost inescapable physical result similar to the one in OP):
Hearing shots and screams from unknown place and going to check on one of the (more) neighbours:
If he was shot, he will be bleeding - let's get bandages.
If he was shot, he would be bleeding - let's get bandages.
a) Do both versions leave the question of whether he was shot equally open?
b) Is the connection if-clause then-clause weaker with 'would' than it would be with 'will'? (Even if someone was at the meeting, they might not know; even if someone was shot, they might not bleed)


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## Thomas Tompion

siares said:


> If he was shot, he will be bleeding - let's get bandages.
> If he was shot, he would be bleeding - let's get bandages.
> a) Do both versions leave the question of whether he was shot equally open?


Yes, they can do.

The sentences have very similar force, because the first one uses the 'future of probability', which is not a true future tense.


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## siares

Thomas Tompion said:


> Yes, they can do.
> The sentences have very similar force, because the first one uses the 'future of probability', which is not a true future tense.


Thank you!!!
I'd really like to know why the 'would' version is being disguised by grammar-books writers.

What about my b) question?
In your experience, is the 'would' used with the same frequency as 'will' both when the result of if-clause is
- almost 100% probable (like bleeding if shot, being wet if rained on)
- practically indeterminable (like being in the place on (time) if one caught an early train)


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## Thomas Tompion

siares said:


> What about my b) question?
> In your experience, is the 'would' used with the same frequency as 'will' both when the result of if-clause is
> - almost 100% probable (like bleeding if shot, being wet if rained on)
> - practically indeterminable (like being in the place on (time) if one caught an early train)


I think people are more likely to say _If he caught the earlier train, he will be there now_ than _If he caught the earlier train, he would be there now, _though a good deal depends on context - are we likely to be able to verify whether or not he is there (if we were going to meet him, we'd use _will_)?  If we were miles away and have no means of verification, we'd be more likely to use _would_.

In either case we'd be very likely to say _should_, to indicate strong probability.


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## siares

Perfect, perfect, perfect. Thanks a million, Thomas.
I'll memorize it for myself as guidance (with many exceptions, to be sure): If the the-clause is readily verifiable, use (don't hesitate to use) 'will'.

In OP, the then-result is readily verifiable, the photograph is there, so my personal choice would be 'will'.

Edit: I've also realised that the near equivalency of 'will' - 'would' for me renders unnecessary  the explanation for usage of 'would' given in 83 which said that the 'would' is in OP because we are speculatively contesting the truth value of if-clause.


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## Thomas Tompion

siares said:


> If the the-clause is readily verifiable, use (don't hesitate to use) 'will'.


I think you may be generalizing dangerously from an example or two.


siares said:


> In OP, the then-result is readily verifiable, the photograph is there, so my personal choice would be 'will'.


But the result could always be the result of some other condition's being met, so I'm not clear that this follows either.

Suppose if A then B, and if C then B.  We cannot conclude from the fact that we have B that we also have A.  B might be the result of condition C's having been met.


siares said:


> Edit: I've also realised that the near equivalency of 'will' - 'would' for me renders unnecessary the explanation for usage of 'would' given in 83 which said that the 'would' is in OP because we are speculatively contesting the truth value of if-clause.


Remember that what you call a 'near equivalency' is dependent on this _will_'s being a very particular sort of apparent future, the future of probability, on which we have a thread, here - future of probability ["will" indicating probability]

I worry, Siares, that you may be looking at one or two very particular examples and drawing unsafe general conclusions from them.


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## siares

Thomas Tompion said:


> I think you may be generalizing dangerously from an example or two.


I always do, but I am delighted whenever proved wrong.. I did write '...guidance with many exceptions...'.


Thomas Tompion said:


> Suppose if A then B, and if C then B. We cannot conclude from the fact that we have B that we also have A. B might be the result of condition C's having been met.


Uff, I am sure nobody thought of this with the OP yet!
so there are 2 cases
*1)*
where* B only can follow from A*, and not from anything else (which is not the OP case), in:
_If A happened, B will be true.
If A happened, B would be true._
*2)*
where* B can follow from either A or C* (or more) (which is more in line with the OP case):
_If C happened, B will be true.
If C happened, B would be true._

I think your example _If he caught the earlier train, he will be there now_, and the OP; is *case 2)* for which you gave general guidance:
I think people are more likely to say If he caught the earlier train, he will be there now than If he caught the earlier train, he would be there now, though a good deal depends on context - are we likely to be able to verify whether or not he is there (if we were going to meet him, we'd use will)? If we were miles away and have no means of verification, we'd be more likely to use would.

Does this usage not go for case 1)?

The explanation for using 'would' in the OP in post 83:


Oddmania said:


> Of course *the speaker is* *convinced* the woman was not standing behind the captain (*otherwise she wouldn't say *"_the blood* would* be here_").* However, it does affect the *tone *(but not the meaning). The message becomes _"Let's assume she was actually standing behind the captain: well, nope, that doesn't work. The blood spatter would be here if that was true_"....
> * If the speaker had not been positive about the woman's position, I suppose she might have said "_If she was standing behind the captain, the blood spatter *will *be here_", but that would also imply that she doesn't know (yet) where the blood spatter really is, but she's expecting to find it '_here_'.


My problem with 83 above is that not only we have to think about whether A and C are true; and whether B is readily verifiable
but also about whether speaker is convinced or not that A is true.

This is so complicated I don't see a chance of me ever being able to apply it.

In view of the quoted 83, would you say that if I am convinced that notA happened: (where both A or C could have resulted in B)
_If A happened, B will be true._
is unlikely, and I should use
_If A happened, B would be true._

regardless of how verifiable B is?


Thank you very much for the link. Thank God there isn't any 'by tomorrow' in OP.


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## Flogger20

I've been studying English for over 3 years. In many grammar books 3 types of conditionals have been included, but I have seen many different types of them.

Conclusion: we are free to create even our own specific conditional structures


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## Thomas Tompion

Flogger20 said:


> Conclusion: we are free to create even our own specific conditional structures


Of course you are; it would be very illiberal to suggest otherwise.

But you should remember that when you depart from the rules of tense sequencing, you risk becoming incomprehensible.


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## wandle

Post 120 is a polite way of saying that you are free to write nonsense if you wish.
That is perfectly true, but it may be more helpful to learners to point out that English does have rules and that these must be followed if you wish to produce correct written English.

It is a fact that these rules are sometimes ignored in spoken English; as a result, film dialogue, trying to reproduce real life to some extent, also breaks the rules from time to time. That is what has happened here in the topic sentence.


Phoebe1200 said:


> If she was standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound.


The meaning of the sentence is that the woman was not standing behind the captain. This was pointed out in post 3


Glasguensis said:


> It's an unreal situation in the past.


Yes. That means the event did not happen. Such conditions are also called closed or remote.

English has only one valid way to express a closed or unrealised condition in the past: that is by using the past perfect tense.
Therefore we can only conclude that the topic sentence is incorrect. It ought to read:

'If she *had been* standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here ...'


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## e2efour

The consensus of this thread seems to be that the original sentence is fine. I fail to see what grammatical reason makes wandle conclude that the topic sentence is incorrect.

We can either look at it as an open past condition with _was_ having a past time reference (see the excellent analysis by Loob in #35) or perhaps as a closed non-past condition, i.e._ if she were standing_).

There is also a large difference between _if she was standing_ and _if she had been standing_. The fomer is speculation (it could be true or untrue), while the latter case says (or is strongly sugggestive of the fact) that she was not standing behind the captain.


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## Vronsky

e2efour said:


> or perhaps as a closed non-past condition, i.e._ if she were standing_).


Do you think it is possible to use a *non-past* condition (_"if she were standing"_) for a past event?

I believe here there are two possibilities:
1) the "straightforward / real / first / factual" conditional as in #1
and
2) the "unreal / contrafactual / third" conditional,
"If she had been standing behind the Captain, then the blood spatter would've been here on her front left shoulder. There's nothing there."

Both are possible and grammatically correct; the 2-nd conditional is incorrect for past events (IMHO, of course )


----------



## siares

e2efour said:


> The consensus of this thread seems to be that the original sentence is fine.


e2e4 and others, it would be super if you could post any examples from books or newspaper.
Anything I learned in this thread and one or two others is impossible to pass on, because people who don't know WR don't trust knowledge gained on an internet forum.
All non-natives are unfamiliar with this, we have no examples from written texts, the construction is absent from grammar books; moreover, this is the only thread on WR I could find that deals with this construction!

Wandle, could you please comment on other examples given in the thread, not the topic one?
(Because I think the OP example is analogous to using _So an hour ago he tells me he doesn't know_...as a typical example to discuss tenses.)
The OP is 'closed', but other examples given used the same construction for 'open' (we don't know whether he did or didn't).


Thomas Tompion said:


> _If he came to the meeting last week, he would now know what we are planning_.
> That leaves open the question of whether or not he came to the meeting.


----------



## e2efour

Vronsky said:


> Do you think it is possible to use a *non-past* condition (_"if she were standing"_) for a past event?
> )


Not if you use the _were-_subjunctive ( _I/he/she/it were_), which is not a tense form. It would have to be _if she was standing_ if it referred to a past event. On the other hand, _if we were standing_ could either be a past reference or a reference to the present or future. The use of a past tense that refers to the past in an _if-_clause is illustrated by _John went to the station yesterday afternoon. If he was lucky enough to catch the train at 2 pm, he would have arrived home by now. _If it does not have a past reference (_If he were lucky enough to catch the train_, where _were_ is not a tense), we would be talking about the future.

Remember the use of the past tense in unreal conditions requires the plain form of the verb, of which there is only one, i.e. the third person plural form (e.g. caught, were, arrived). _Was_ is the verb that is irregular since it can mean _she was_ in both a past event and a non-past event.

Another two examples:
_If I told you that her name was Violet, I was wrong_ (I have already told you.)
_If I told you (=If I were to tell you) that her name was Violet, she would be annoyed. _(I have not told you yet.)


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## e2efour

siares said:


> e2e4 and others, it would be super if you could post any examples from books or newspaper.
> Anything I learned in this thread and one or two others is impossible to pass on, because people who don't know WR don't trust knowledge gained on an internet forum.
> All non-natives are unfamiliar with this, we have no examples from written texts, the construction is absent from grammar books; moreover, this is the only thread on WR I could find that deals with this construction!


Here is an example of an open conditional with a past time reference:
1) _If he bought it, he got a bargain._
Here is a remote/closed condition with a past time reference (known as a doubly remote conditional):
2) _If he had bought it, he would have got a bargain._ (The implication is that he did not buy it.)
Both examples come from the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, CGEL.

Also from CGEL: "As with open conditionals, all combinations of protasis and apodosis times are possible."
3) "_If I went tomorrow, I would have more time in Paris." _[a future remote conditional]

We can also change sentence 1) to a future remote conditional: _If he bought it, he would get a bargain.
_
Note: It is such a long thread that I don't know what examples you are referring to.
At any rate, the above may be of some help.


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## siares

Thank you very much, e2e4.


e2efour said:


> It is such a long thread that I don't know what examples you are referring to.


I'm after examples of, specifically,
_If he did verbX in the past, he *would* verbY now._ (Your examples don't have this special mix.)

like in these examples from two of the above posts
_If he came to the meeting last week, he would now know what we are planning_.
_If it was snowing half an hour ago, my car would be covered. But, as you see, it isn't covered, so it can't have been snowing half an hour ago._

_
_


----------



## wandle

e2efour said:


> I fail to see what grammatical reason makes wandle conclude that the topic sentence is incorrect.


it is possible in conditionals to mix clauses which differ in time ('If we had won that contract last year, the company would now be in profit'), but not in mood, i.e. real versus unreal ('If I had been born rich, I grew up in a big house').

The problem is that the topic sentence, as it stands, mixes real with unreal (if she was ..., spatter would be ...).
If we agree with *Glasguensis* that the scenario is unreal, then we have to correct the first verb. We have grammatically two options: 'were' or 'had been'.

'Were' will only work if the context is present. However, I understand that the scene is a reconstruction. This means the context is past. Hence we have to make it 'had been'.


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## Vronsky

e2efour said:


> _If I told you that her name was Violet, I was wrong_ (I have already told you.)


It's a slightly strange example that implies loss of memory 
"If I told you (I don't remember whether I told you or not) that her name was Violet, I was wrong."



e2efour said:


> Here is an example of an open conditional with a past time reference:
> 1) _If he bought it, he got a bargain._





e2efour said:


> We can also change sentence 1) to a future remote conditional: _If he bought it, he would get a bargain._



Can we change it inversely? From a future remote conditional to an open conditional with a past time reference?

Let's take your example
"_If I told you (=If I were to tell you) that her name was Violet, she would be annoyed. _(I have not told you yet.)"​It's the future remote conditional. What would be the open conditional with a past time reference here? (I don't like "If I told..." but anyway) That is, both events (my conversation and her annoyance_)_ occurred in the past, but "I" don't remember if "I" told "you" her name.

1) _If I told you that her name was Violet, she would be annoyed. _
2) _If I told you that her name was Violet, she was annoyed. _
3) _If I told you that her name was Violet, she got annoyed. _
...


----------



## Thomas Tompion

siares said:


> Thank you very much, e2e4.
> 
> I'm after examples of, specifically,
> _If he did verbX in the past, he *would* verbY now._ (Your examples don't have this special mix.)
> 
> like in these examples from two of the above posts
> _If he came to the meeting last week, he would now know what we are planning_.
> _If it was snowing half an hour ago, my car would be covered. But, as you see, it isn't covered, so it can't have been snowing half an hour ago._


Hi Siares,

There's no trouble with this form at all.

The second conditional can be used in what I call the detective's conditional - _If Stephen strangled her, his footprints would be in the garden_ - but there are no footprints in the garden, so Stephen didn't strangle her.

This is one way in which it is so misleading and misguided to suggest that in the second conditional the if-clause can only apply to a future event.

It's worth adding that the detective, if he hadn't looked in the garden, could say _If Stephen strangled her, his footprints will be in the garden._  He can then go to the garden to look and if he finds the footprints, they amount to evidence that Stephen committed the murder.


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## wandle

May I address the two examples in red?

Example A


Thomas Tompion said:


> The second conditional can be used in what I call the detective's conditional - _If Stephen strangled her, his footprints would be in the garden_ - but there are no footprints in the garden, so Stephen didn't strangle her.


If that example were a second conditional, then it would refer to the future: that is, addressing what would follow if at a future time Stephen committed the (now still imaginary) crime.

Example B


Thomas Tompion said:


> It's worth adding that the detective, if he hadn't looked in the garden, could say _If Stephen strangled her, his footprints will be in the garden._ He can then go to the garden to look and if he finds the footprints, they amount to evidence that Stephen committed the murder.


Distinguishing example B from example A makes it very clear that in example A the speaker already knows that Stephen did not commit the crime.

Consequently the speaker in A is aware that any hypothesis ('if' clause) about Stephen committing the crime must be untrue.
The only grammatical structure which English possesses for an untrue hypothesis about the past is a clause of the type 'if + past perfect'.

Therefore example A requires the clause 'if Stephen had strangled her'.


----------



## SevenDays

Phoebe1200 said:


> _NCIS_
> (A woman and her fiancé were on a date. Her fiancé got shot and she claims that they were attacked by someone. So first she's being treated as a witness but later on, the evidence reveals that she was the one who killed him)
> 
> *Forensic scientist:* If she was standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound.
> There's nothing there.
> 
> 
> I know that the _"when he was struggling with the killer"_ part refers to an actual, real event that happened and I have no problem with that.
> But I can't figure out this _"if she was standing ". _Is it hypothetical or is it also real, like_ "and if she was standing behind him like she said she was"_?
> 
> Please help.



You may also look at it this way: the past form "was" in _If I* was* standing_ is simply there to match the past form "was" in _when he *was* struggling_, so that both ideas occupy the _same_ temporal sphere ("past"). Asking if this is _hypothetical_ or _real_ misses a larger point: _If she was standing_ presents this idea as a given, as* factual*, for the purposes of the narrative. What the scientist is saying is that, if this scenario is taken as factual, then a logical conclusion should follow, and that's what "would" points to: an expectation, a result, an outcome (but the expected reality isn't the case; the blood spatter _is not_ where it should be, given the situation that is presented as factual).

Using the past tense is one way of presenting things as _factual_, but tenses are relative, and the forensic scientist could perfectly say "If she *is* standing behind the Captain when he* is* struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here on her front left shoulder." The present "is" does the same thing as "was:" it shows the narrative as factual. The only difference is in terms of temporal perspective, whether what you present as factual is from the perspective of the present ("is"), or of the past ("was").

The type 4 conditionals (or 5, if mixed conditionals is included) is a useful teaching tool, but that doesn't mean that this construction should be changed so that it perfectly fits into conditional 1, 2, or 3. Besides, if the sentence in question doesn't fit into any of those categories, you simply file it under "mixed conditionals."


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## wandle

SevenDays said:


> The type 4 conditionals (or 5, if mixed conditionals is included) is a useful teaching tool, but that doesn't mean that this construction should be changed so that it perfectly fits into conditional 1, 2, or 3. Besides, if the sentence in question doesn't fit into any of those categories, you simply file it under "mixed conditionals."


Does that mean you would say the following example is grammatical, because it is mixed?


wandle said:


> 'If I had been born rich, I grew up in a big house'


----------



## wandle

siares said:


> Wandle, could you please comment on other examples given in the thread, not the topic one?


I am very sorry, but when there is so much material in one thread I find it impossible to tackle it all.


----------



## e2efour

Vronsky said:


> Can we change it inversely? From a future remote conditional to an open conditional with a past time reference?
> 
> Let's take your example
> "_If I told you (=If I were to tell you) that her name was Violet, she would be annoyed. _(I have not told you yet.)"​It's the future remote conditional. What would be the open conditional with a past time reference here? (I don't like "If I told..." but anyway) That is, both events (my conversation and her annoyance_)_ occurred in the past, but "I" don't remember if "I" told "you" her name.
> 
> 1) _If I told you that her name was Violet, she would be annoyed. _[open past: _she would become annoyed_/_would get angry_]
> 2) _If I told you that her name was Violet, she was annoyed._ [open past: _she became angry_/_this certainly annoyed her_]
> 3) _If I told you that her name was Violet, she got annoyed._[open past]
> ...



The use of _would_ usually means _used to _in an open condition. But the sentences are not like the one in #1, which is about drawing a conclusion from a past event.


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## SevenDays

wandle said:


> Does that mean you would say the following example is grammatical, because it is mixed?



No, I wouldn't. But perhaps I've missed something (it's a long thread, after all); is anyone arguing that _all_ mixed conditional constructions are grammatical? I'm certainly not saying that. Your example breaks down because the conclusion doesn't logically follow the premise. In the original example, the conclusion logically follows from the premise that's stated as factual. That's the point of conditional sentences, whether one thing logically leads to another. No one is saying that you shouldn't follow sequence of tenses, but conditional sentences are not tensed (in the OP example both "if she was standing" and "if she is standing" are valid), and focusing _exclusively _on sequence of tenses misses out on many possible combinations.


----------



## wandle

SevenDays said:


> is anyone arguing that _all_ mixed conditional constructions are grammatical?


Perhaps I was mistaken in thinking your earlier comment covered any sentence outside the categories mentioned.


SevenDays said:


> if the sentence in question doesn't fit into any of those categories, you simply file it under "mixed conditionals."


My own observations in posts 128 and 131 were pointing out that it is possible in conditionals to mix clauses which differ in time, but not those which differ in mood (real versus unreal).
The problem with the topic sentence is that it mixes the moods.


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## Dale Texas

Loob said:


> It seems to me that the speaker is mentally postulating two options, although he only actually says one of the options out loud:
> _Either she was standing behind him then, or she wasn't.
> ~ If she was standing behind him then, there would be blood on her left shoulder now.
> ~ If she wasn't standing behind him then, there would not be blood on her left shoulder now. _
> 
> He then draws a conclusion:
> _There isn't any blood there now, and therefore she wasn't standing behind him._



You said it best.

And as others have mentioned, this is _speculation-to-conclusion,_ but that doesn't seem to fit into these horrendously rigid, complicated, and *limited* systems of "Types of Conditionals." 

English is a language, not a system of mathematical formulas.

(Just plug something in and get the result you want, or panic when you get an answer that doesn't seem to fit the hackles you want to impose on it.)


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## wandle

No language can work without rules and that means we need to point out when they are broken, as in the present case.


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## Loob

wandle said:


> No language can work without rules and that means we need to point out when they are broken, as in the present case.


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## siares

It occurred to me I might have been missing something important..
The speculational sentences being discussed most recently are all in context where we already know the truth or not of the '-then clause'.

I am interested in this case:


Thomas Tompion said:


> _If he caught the earlier train, he would be there now......_(if we were going to meet him, we'd use _will_)? If we were miles away and have no means of verification, we'd be more likely to use _would_.





Thomas Tompion said:


> the detective, if he hadn't looked in the garden, could say _If Stephen strangled her, his footprints will be in the garden._


Would you please elaborate? The detective could use 'would' here, too, correct?



Thomas Tompion said:


> There's no trouble with this form at all.


Thank you, I understood that.


wandle said:


> I am very sorry, but when there is so much material in one thread I find it impossible to tackle it all.


Thank you for addressing my question anyway!


----------



## wandle

wandle said:


> No language can work without rules and that means we need to point out when they are broken, as in the present case.





Loob said:


>


Post 137 sums up the grounds for that conclusion: set out more fully in posts 128 and 131.


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## Loob

Indeed it does, wandle.


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## wandle

siares said:


> True open conditionals cannot be in first person


I beg to differ.

Past open: 'If I misunderstood you, please forgive me'. (The speaker is unsure what the other person meant.)
Present open: 'If I am mistaken [in regard to my present opinion], please correct me'.
Future open: 'If I forget you [when I come to share things out later], please remind me'.



Loob said:


> Indeed it does, wandle.


My turn to be puzzled. I thought your emoji meant you did not understand why I said the topic sentence was incorrect.


----------



## Thomas Tompion

siares said:


> Would you please elaborate? The detective could use 'would' here, too, correct?


Yes, certainly he could.

Which he chose would depend on the context.  If he was looking and couldn't find them, he'd probably say 'would', and if he was in no position to look but had suddenly had the thought, he'd say 'will'.  There are almost certainly other considerations which would cause him to choose one rather than the other.


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## siares

Thank you.
It's a shame that OP features mannequins and photographs, all other examples in the thread are much better.


wandle said:


> I beg to differ.


Yes, Thomas Tompion has given an example of such in 105. Regarding your examples, we are missing a term for ...causal? conditionals. _If you didn't like the meal, you can go to hell _ has a form of the conditional but is not the same as _If she drunk the whole bottle yesterday, she will have a hangover now. _which would be odd in first person.


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## wandle

Those examples are not mine.


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## siares

Yes, but your examples made me think about the term I would like to have. (Please let me know in case there is one.)
After that I used 'you can go to hell' spontaneously.


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## PaulQ

I'll admit to not having read three pages, but for what it's worth:
*


Phoebe1200 said:



			Forensic scientist: If she was standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound. There's nothing there.
		
Click to expand...

* 
The red is hypothetical (and I would have preferred *If she were standing)*, the blue is the conclusion of the hypothesis, and the black is factual.

“when he was struggling with the killer” modifies “standing”
and
“from this exit wound” modifies “spatter”.

I’m no expert of “types of conditional”, which seem to be a moveable feast, but I’m sure that, in basic terms the sentence is

If A were happening, then B would be the case.

It is irrelevant whether B is the case or not.


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## Loob

(Sorry, Paul "were" would be wrong in the OP.)


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## Dale Texas

PaulQ said:


> I'll admit to not having read three pages, but for what it's worth:
> 
> 
> The red is hypothetical, the blue is the conclusion of the hypothesis, and the black is factual.
> 
> “when he was struggling with the killer” modifies “standing”
> and
> “from this exit wound” modifies “spatter”.
> 
> I’m no expert of “types of conditional”, which seem to be a moveable feast, but I’m sure that, in basic terms the sentence is
> 
> If A were happening, then B would be the case.
> 
> It is irrelevant whether B is the case or not.



I agree. Completely irrelevant.


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## Loob

I think we should stop this thread there


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## siares

Not before someone finds examples of this structure in books.


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## Loob

Happy hunting, siares.


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## JulianStuart

They are speculating on how things happened:

Speculation #1) as a statement: She was stand*ing* behind the Captain when he was struggl*ing *with the killer, and (therefore) the blood spatter would (now) be (expected to be found) here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound. (Both verbs are  -ing because they are occurring together in time - a tense shift isn't needed for clear communication)

(Implied) Speculation #2) she was standing somewhere else when he was struggling with the killer, and the blood spatter would not be expected to be here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound.

Converted to an If ... then... statement we get:

If (the statement is true that) she was stand*ing* behind the Captain when he was struggl*ing *with the killer, then (the consequence is that) the blood spatter would (now) be expected to be found here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound.
I'm fine with this grammatically - but then I don't have to force it into any of these numbered categories


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## Loob




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## PaulQ

siares said:


> Not before someone finds examples of this structure in books.


Use Google Books and use the search term "If he were" "then he would" - include the quotation marks. There are hundreds of examples...


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## Loob

(But that's not the structure we're looking at, Paul.

_Finally bowing out now...._)


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## JamesM

I found this quote from "The English Verb" by Michael Lewis, 1994, Cambridge University Press, page 148:



> It is the verb phrase not the sentence which is the fundamental unit requiring analysis. Certain combinations are, for semantic reasons, highly frequent, while others are less frequent or even impossible. ...
> 
> A particular misunderstanding frequently arises in the teaching of so-called conditional sentences. It is common to teach three basic kinds. ...
> 
> If students are taught only the first, second and third conditionals, they will know only a small, admittedly highly frequent, sub-set of the possibilities. It is not necessary to teach the fourth conditional, the fifth conditional, etc., but it is important to recognise that the possibility arises from the meaning of the individual clauses ... . The explanation of the use of a form in a conditional sentence is exactly the same as that of its occurrence in any other utterance. The underlying principle behind this is that each main verb phrase is treated independently.


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## Vronsky

PaulQ said:


> Use Google Books and use the search term "If he were" "then he would" - include the quotation marks. There are hundreds of examples...


All these examples are about the present. This type of conditionals is called "Present Unreal Conditional" (a.k.a. Second Conditional, Conditional 2). "Present" because it is used for the present. "If he were rich, then he would buy a house". (If he were rich *now*)

Could you provide one example about the past?
For example, someone says in 2017, "If he were to win the lottery in 2015, then he would buy a house in 2016."
Is it correct grammar, what do you think?


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## PaulQ

Loob said:


> (Sorry, Paul "were" would be wrong in the OP.)


 Ah, we have crossed sword on this matter before - was it at Heidelberg?  The statement is irrealis - the person saying it already knew it was not the case.


Loob said:


> (But that's not the structure we're looking at, Paul.


That's what comes of not reading three pages - are you after the "was" version?

Keith had the most competitive nature of the entire group. If he was walking down the street with friends he would have to race them. If he was standing on a station platform he would take bets on how late the train would be. Room 43

He told me if he was walking on the street the police would stop him to check him out and then they would find he was not wanted for anything.
Age is Only a Number


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## siares

Thank for the search tip, although 





PaulQ said:


> "were"


after all the painstainkingly achieved progress, you've dragged the thread into dark times 3 pages back.

We need _'if he was/did X as a one off occurrence in the past, he would be/do Y now.
_
Something like:
_If John ate the poisoned breakfast this morning, he would be dead now._
instead of the version all the non-natives knew:
_If John ate the poisoned breakfast in the morning, he will be dead now._



JamesM said:


> I found this quote


My hopes up...


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## karlalou

I got it! It was confusing but

The speaker is just speculating and doesn't know what was the fact.
"If she was standing behind the Captain" is a simple condition and not a hypothesis.
It's not 'I were' type nor 'I had had' type.

And the conclusion "then the blood spatter would be here on her front left shoulder" is talking about a possibility when the condition just mentioned is the case.

The same combination of "If my wife has a cold, I would catch it." Only I have no idea why this doesn't work. A native has told me that if it's "If my wife gets a cold, I would catch it" would work. I wonder if natives are so concerned about the grammar for the grammar sake??? Anyway I am left in confusion.


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## wandle

All the examples in post 161 are, unlike the topic sentence, true open past conditionals, in which 'would' is not modal, but means 'used to'.

The topic sentence starts from a past condition known by the speaker to be false and concludes with a consequence (also false) in present time.
_'If she was standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here ...'_
Thus both clauses are expressing something known to be untrue. The 'if' clause and result clause together are expressing an unrealised sequence of events.

This therefore requires a closed (unreal, or hypothetical) treatment.
Given the two different times involved, the 'if' clause requires 'if' plus past perfect and the result clause requires modal plus infinitive:

_'If she *had been* standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here ...'
_
If I may quote from Sidney Greenbaum in the Oxford English Grammar:


> Direct conditions may be open (or real) or hypothetical (closed or unreal) ...
> Hypothetical conditions ... express the speaker's belief that the condition has not been fulfilled (for past conditions), is not fulfilled (for present conditions) or is unlikely to be fulfilled (for future conditions).
> ... The past hypothetical condition takes the past perfect in the conditional clause ...


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## wolfbm1

wandle said:


> All the examples in post 161 are, unlike the topic sentence, true open past conditionals, in which 'would' is not modal, but means 'used to'.


 Hello Wandle. Hadn't you written the above explanation I would never have guessed that 'would,' in PaulQ's sentences in post 161, means 'used to.'

I've been reading this tread with great interest. It is interesting to see how native speakers of English try to classify a sentence (if she was standing), which, when translated to my mother tongue, can have a) a past form of a verb, when I mean a past event or b) a past form plus a two-letter particle which marks probability, (the combination of which has a similar effect as the English 'if she were') when I mean a hypothetical situation.
I wish native speakers of English used that special form more often.


----------



## wandle

wolfbm1 said:


> Hadn't you written the above explanation I would never have guessed that 'would,' in PaulQ's sentences in post 161, means 'used to.'


Please note: when we put 'had' (or other past forms) with 'not' at the front of a conditional clause, we do not use contraction. It should be: 'had you not'.

How can we tell that 'would' means 'used to' in those examples? Because the 'if' clause contains 'was' (past indicative), showing it is an _open_ past condition.

How do we know that in the topic sentence 'would' is modal? Because 'used to' (habitual action) makes no sense; and the context also tells us that both the 'if' clause and result clause are expressing what the speaker knows to be untrue.


----------



## wandle

wolfbm1 said:


> I wish native speakers of English used that special form more often.


Do you mean 'were' as an indicator of a hypothetical? We only use that in a limited set of cases. It is not universal, and does not apply in the topic sentence.


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## siares

(Before I was guessing the OP 'would has something to do with future of probability, not so much anymore, but to clarify terminology). 


wandle said:


> How do we know that in the topic sentence 'would' is modal?


Is the 'guessing/polite' 'would', future of probability also classified as modal?
- Who's that at the door? - _That would be the postman._
Or, to use a construction in OP
- _If they rang twice, that would be the postman.
_
Thank you.


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## wandle

That is going off topic, I think, but in both those cases it ought to be 'will', which I regard as a form of prediction.


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## siares

Thank you. I know this 'would' used instead of 'will' from other (non-conditional) threads, it's hard to tell when it ought to be the default 'will' and when the more tentative version is admissible.


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## PaulQ

I rather like this: Mixed Conditionals


> It [_"If I was there, I would have done that"_] is entirely appropriate in some rather special circumstances. For instance, we can imagine a cellphone conversation:
> 
> A: Where are you?
> B: I'm at school, Mom.
> A: Really? You're not at the video arcade, are you?
> B: I answered the phone, didn't I? If I was there, I wouldn't have done that. My phone can't pick up a signal at the arcade.
> 
> English grammar allows for far more conditional combinations than 3. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd conditionals are just the most common forms, presented in that way for the convenience of EFL learners.


----------



## wandle

Speaking of mixed conditionals, I am somewhat surprised that *Thomas Tompion* has not identified the topic sentence as a mistaken example of a favourite theme, the mixed 3rd/2nd conditional, as mentioned for example in this thread:


Thomas Tompion said:


> Now we have a III/II mixed conditional (past perfect in the if-clause, conditional in the main clause).


However, as regards the arcade example:


PaulQ said:


> If I was there, I wouldn't have done that.


This one is not the same type as the topic sentence, is it? Compare it with the corrected topic sentence:
_If she had been standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here ...'
_
Both sentences are dealing with a false condition and a false consequence; the difference is that the topic sentence has an unreal past condition followed by an unreal present consequence, whereas the arcade example has an unreal present condition followed by an unreal past consequence.


> The 1st, 2nd and 3rd conditionals are just the most common forms,


That is not in fact so, as shown by various studies cited in this article by Robert Norris.


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## karlalou

> A: Where are you?
> B: I'm at school, Mom.
> A: Really? You're not at the video arcade, are you?
> B: I answered the phone, didn't I? If I was there, I wouldn't have done that. My phone can't pick up a signal at the arcade.


Thanks, PaulQ for this example! I like it!


----------



## SevenDays

wandle said:


> All the examples in post 161 are, unlike the topic sentence, true open past conditionals, in which 'would' is not modal, but means 'used to'.
> 
> The topic sentence starts from a past condition known by the speaker to be false and concludes with a consequence (also false) in present time.
> _'If she was standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here ...'_
> Thus both clauses are expressing something known to be untrue. The 'if' clause and result clause together are expressing an unrealised sequence of events.
> 
> This therefore requires a closed (unreal, or hypothetical) treatment.
> Given the two different times involved, the 'if' clause requires 'if' plus past perfect and the result clause requires modal plus infinitive:
> 
> _'If she *had been* standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here ...'
> _
> If I may quote from Sidney Greenbaum in the Oxford English Grammar:
> 
> Direct conditions may be open (or real) or hypothetical (closed or unreal) ...
> Hypothetical conditions ... express the speaker's belief that the condition has not been fulfilled (for past conditions), is not fulfilled (for present conditions) or is unlikley to be fulfilled (for future conditions).
> ... The past hypothetical condition takes the past perfect in the conditional clause ...



It'd be helpful to see what sort of example Mr. Greenbaum has for the quote you've given us, and how that relates to our Captain example. I suspect (given that most grammar books don't treat conditionals in much depth) that he uses an example where things nicely fit the given description, as in "If I *had been* there, I *would have* seen her," or "If I *had won* the lottery, I *would* be rich." Our captain example is of a different structure. The condition part includes a _when-clause _connecting two propositions that are concurrent in time. That's what I pointed out in my previous post, which I'll paraphrase here: the past form "was" in "If she was" matches the past form "was" of the _when-clause_, so that the two propositions are simultaneous in past time: _If she *was* standing behind the Captain when he *was* struggling with the killer._ This condition is followed by an expected result in present time (_then the blood spatter would be here_); only that the expected result doesn't match reality, and that's what troubles the scientist.

The problem with "If she had been standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer" is that the past perfect always shows _anteriority:_ one point in the past occurs _before_ another more recent point in the past. One is therefore left wondering, did the "standing" happen before the "struggling"? _When_ suggests "at the same time," which is why the two verb forms in the condition clause _match_, with "was," or "is" to show the condition as unfolding in the present (_If she* is* standing here when the Captain *is* struggling with the killer_).


----------



## karlalou

SevenDays said:


> This condition is followed by an expected result in present time (_then the blood spatter would be here_); only that the expected result doesn't match reality, and that's what troubles the scientist.


Right! The speaker actually knows what the truth is because he sees the result.
The scientist is saying "Look! What does the evidence say?!", starting the if-clause using the simple 'open' conditional. No, he's not pretending anything. It must be the natural thing to say in English. A wrong example? I don't believe so.



PaulQ said:


> I rather like this: Mixed Conditionals
> 
> 
> 
> B: I answered the phone, didn't I? If I was there, I wouldn't have done that.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> English grammar allows for far more conditional combinations than 3.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Of course the kid knows what is the truth, but naturally he says his if-clause as an open conditional. Right?

Can you imagine how it's like being taught in the confinement, getting marked wrong every time you write a sentence doesn't fit in the grammar table? XD


----------



## Loob

Returning briefly.... I think the comment by "Shoe" which immediately follows Paul's post 171 English Stack Exchange extract is pertinent. I quote:

The first clause of _If I had been there, I would have done that_ is a counterfactual. The speaker was in fact not there.

By contrast, someone who says _If I was there, I would have done that_ does not remember being there but hypothesises what she would have done if in fact she was.

This is a much less common scenario but is conceivable when speaking of events long ago:
_If I was at the dance, I would have been the one standing by myself in the corner._​


----------



## wandle

Loob said:


> If I was at the dance, I would have been the one standing by myself in the corner.


This again is mixing the moods, real and unreal. If it is to be an open conditional, it needs to have 'will' instead of 'would'.

Apart from that, it is not a comparable case to the topic sentence. There, the speaker already knows that the consequence is false: the blood spatter is not in the right place for the hypothesis being considered. The point of the sentence, in other words, is to demonstrate that the woman was _not_ behind the captain. Thus the 'if' clause is meant to be counterfactual and 'was' is therefore a mistake for 'had been'.


SevenDays said:


> When suggests "at the same time"


Indeed it does, but this is not a problem.


SevenDays said:


> The problem with "If she had been standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer" is that the past perfect always shows anteriority


It does not show anteriority in conditionals. To quote Prof. Greenbaum again:


> The hypothetical nature of the condition is conveyed through the verb forms, which are backshifted.


In other words, 'had been' is simply showing that the condition is hypothetical, i.e. unreal or counterfactual. There is no anteriority between the 'if' clause and the 'when' clause.


----------



## wolfbm1

wandle said:


> Please note: when we put 'had' (or other past forms) with 'not' at the front of a conditional clause, we do not use contraction. It should be: 'had you not'.
> 
> How can we tell that 'would' means 'used to' in those examples? Because the 'if' clause contains 'was' (past indicative), showing it is an _open_ past condition.
> 
> How do we know that in the topic sentence 'would' is modal? Because 'used to' (habitual action) makes no sense; and the context also tells us that both the 'if' clause and result clause are expressing what the speaker knows to be untrue.


Thank you for the correction. 
I used the inversion to show that it is possible to go around the 'if', which marks a condition in the OP's sentence. 
I don't think it would possible to use the inversion 'was she standing' as an alternative to 'if she was standing.'

I understand that the conditional clause 'if she was standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer' is also an _open_ past condition. The present counterpart is the clause 'if she is standing behind the Captain when he is struggling with the killer.'


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## Loob

Re post 177

Well, as so often, wandle, we'll just have to agree to disagree....

I see the topic sentence as an example of one of the "Not 1-2-3" types of conditional described in the interesting article you posted in another thread:  _How do we overcome the difficulties of teaching conditionals?_  In particular, I see it - using the terminology attributed to Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman - as a *factual conditional, subtype 'explicit inference'*.

That terminology ties up rather neatly, of course, with post 52 in this thread.


----------



## wolfbm1

wandle said:


> Do you mean 'were' as an indicator of a hypothetical? We only use that in a limited set of cases. It is not universal, and does not apply in the topic sentence.


No, it doesn't. If it did, we would have a closed condition. The thing is that when you mean a closed condition, you can either use 'were' or 'was.' But when you mean an open condition, you can only use 'was.' I hope that is correct.


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## wandle

SevenDays said:


> I suspect (given that most grammar books don't treat conditionals in much depth) that he uses an example where things nicely fit the given description, as in "If I *had been* there, I *would have* seen her,"


That is the kind of example Greenbaum gives.


SevenDays said:


> or "If I *had won* the lottery, I *would* be rich."


He does not give an example of this kind, but this one is the same kind as the corrected topic sentence: 'If she had been ... blood spatter would be ...'.

In other words, it is a case of what the 0,1,2,3 school call a 'mixed 3rd/2nd conditional': past unreal (closed, hypothetical) condition followed by a present unreal consequence. That is a perfectly valid combination (unlike the actual topic sentence).

The arcade example ('If I was there [but I'm not], I wouldn't have done that [but I did]') is the other way round: a present unreal condition followed by a past unreal consequence. Therefore it is not a parallel to the topic sentence.


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## wolfbm1

> a *factual conditional, subtype 'explicit inference'*.



 I like that name. So, the factual conditional has a clause with an open past condition.


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## wandle

Loob said:


> It seems to me that the sentence in the OP falls neatly into Cowan's *Factual - explicit inference* category.


From the examples in post 52, as well as the term 'factual', it is clear that Cowan's factual category is none other than the familiar category of open conditionals. However, the topic sentence cannot be an open conditional, because the speaker already knows that the 'if' clause and the result clause are both untrue, i.e. non-factual (or counterfactual).

If I may quote Glasguensis again (referring to the 'if' clause):





Glasguensis said:


> It's an unreal situation in the past.


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## Loob

A re-reading of the earlier parts of the thread may be beneficial, wandle.


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## wandle

Loob said:


> A re-reading of the earlier parts of the thread may be beneficial, wandle.


I do agree. I have provided a key quote from there in my last post. Here's another:





johngiovanni said:


> Clearly the forensic scientist does not believe that she was standing behind the Captain when he was struggling.


And here's a third:


Thomas Tompion said:


> I think Kirusha is right to say that the forensic scientist meant was _If she had been standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here on her front left shoulder from this exit wound_. This is a standard mixed 3rd/2nd conditional (past perfect in the if-clause, conditional in the main clause), appropriate for a condition in the past and the present consequence of its having being met.


This, incidentally, means I must take back my comment in post 172. *Thomas Tompion* did indeed spot it.


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## Loob

I'm in danger of arguing with you, wandle, so I'll bow out again....


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## Phoebe1200

Hi, everyone.
Thanks so much for all your contributions and taking such an interest in my thread.


siares said:


> Who's that at the door? - _That would be the postman._
> - _If they rang twice, that would be the postman._


We really can't use "would" in the two examples above?


PaulQ said:


> Keith had the most competitive nature of the entire group. If he was walking down the street with friends he would have to race them. If he was standing on a station platform he would take bets on how late the train would be.





PaulQ said:


> e told me if he was walking on the street the police would stop him to check him out and then they would find he was not wanted for anything.


Can't these examples be understood as referring to the future?


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## PaulQ

Yes, they are predictive.


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## wandle

Phoebe1200 said:


> Can't these examples be understood as referring to the future?


In PaulQ's examples, 'he would' means he was in the habit of doing whatever it was. These examples are straightforward descriptions of the past. There is no future reference at all. This is a standard meaning of 'would' (past tense). It expresses repeated habitual action in the past.


Phoebe1200 said:


> We really can't use "would" in the two examples above?


In Siares' examples, the natural and correct English usage is 'will'. If you use 'would' in this case, it is a modal 'would' and it creates a sense of unreality about what you say. There is nothing in the context to justify that.


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## PaulQ

wandle said:


> That is not in fact so, as shown by various studies cited in this article by Robert Norris.


That link is dead - could you re-link, please?


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## wandle

PaulQ said:


> That link is dead - could you re-link, please?


Done. Sorry about that.


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## Phoebe1200

Thank you, both.


PaulQ said:


> Yes, they are predictive.


I don't understand. Could you please elaborate?


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## siares

wandle said:


> I have provided a key quote from there in my last post.


Terminology evolved after that in the thread...
The thing about the OP is that the scientist is like a teacher showing a student how the result could have been achieved. The teacher knows how the situation went, but the student doesn't know that, so she's presenting various ways events could have unfolded as an open situation, pretending she doesn't know which was the real one.

I this thread you and Forero held the view that 'that will be the postman' is future tense, where you explained we can see that with an implied ellipsis: _that will prove to be the postman._

Couldn't we think of the OP structure in this way?
_If John ate the poisoned breakfast, he would be dead now._
_If it were the case that John ate the poisoned breakfast, he would be dead now._

@PaulQ, when I try the search, I keep finding structures about present (If I was at the arcade NOW) whereas I'm after  examples of
_'if he was/did X as a one off occurrence in the past, hesheit would be/do Y now.
_


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## Phoebe1200

PaulQ said:


> Yes, they are predictive.





Phoebe1200 said:


> I don't understand. Could you please elaborate?


I mean, were you addressing my question in 187?
And if 'yes' are you saying that the "would"  in your examples is predictive?


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## wandle

siares said:


> Terminology evolved after that in the thread...


The facts have not. The case has not changed.


siares said:


> Couldn't we think of the OP structure in this way?
> _If it were the case that John ate the poisoned breakfast, he would be dead now._


That is equivalent to 'If John had eaten the poisoned breakfast, he would be dead now'.

That in turn is equivalent to the corrected topic sentence:
'If she *had been* standing behind the Captain when he was struggling with the killer, then the blood spatter would be here ...'


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## e2efour

What about the following open conditional?

A. Do you believe what the reporter said in the paper yesterday about aliens visiting our planet?
B. I’m not sure. But if _he was telling_ the truth, the implications _would_ be serious and I _would_ like to find out more about his sources.

I find this an unremarkable sentence.
It is not the same as _If he had been telling the truth_, which implies that he was probably not telling the truth.

It is also worth pointing out that sentences with the pattern _If he had done that, he would have_ can also contain open conditions as well as remote conditions, although they perhaps occur less often.


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## PaulQ

In this whole thread, we see a variety of opinions on the use of various verb forms in the example given in the OP's first post; these range from the prescriptive to the liberal. 

We are all acutely aware that "grammar" is not a set of rules, but an explanation given with reference to previous examples, each of which may have greater weight for some people than for others, each of which may have exceptions, and some of which may have been omitted. 

Of the posts that directly address the grammar, I am most impressed with #174 by Seven Days If she was standing....when he was struggling....would be - I cannot see that there is going to be much progress beyond that point.

(Another consideration is that the speaker said this and there is no ambiguity. We therefore have the evidence that both the author and the character he invented think the structure is normal.)


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## wandle

e2efour said:


> It is not the same as _If he had been telling the truth_, which implies that he was probably not telling the truth.


And it is not the same as the topic sentence, which clearly means that the woman was not standing behind the captain.
I would correct the example as follows:
'But if he was telling the truth, the implications *are* serious and I would like to find out more about his sources'.
In that corrected form, the conditional part ends at 'serious' and the final clause is independent of it.


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## wandle

PaulQ said:


> Of the posts that directly address the grammar, I am most impressed with #174 by Seven Days If she was standing....when he was struggling....would be - I cannot see that there is going to be much progress beyond that point.


Please see my answers in posts 177 and 181.


PaulQ said:


> We are all acutely aware that "grammar" is not a set of rules


I for one have no doubt that grammar is a set of rules, without which we could not achieve communication.
I share the view that humans have an innate sense of grammar which is exemplified in different forms in different languages.
In each case, it is a set of rules derived in an individual way from a universal core of linguistic capacity.


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## e2efour

wandle said:


> And it is not the same as the topic sentence, which clearly means that the woman was not standing behind the captain.
> I would correct the example as follows:
> But if he was telling the truth, the implications *are* serious and I would like to find out more about his sources.



Why do you keep on saying that the woman was not standing behind the captain? Why is that relevant?
The original sentence is a good example of speculation, as has been pointed out several times. When you read it, you have no idea of whether it is true or not.
Note also that the forensic scientist only said that the suggestion was false _after_ uttering his sentence.

I did not say that the implications _are_ serious, I said they _would_ be serious. You clearly do not understand or appreciate the difference.


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## PaulQ

wandle said:


> I for one have no doubt that grammar is a set of rules, without which we could not achieve communication.


This seems to be a difficult position to sustain because were it true, then there could be no evolution of language.

All grammar can ever be is a statement of what has been the case so far explained in terms of past performance. The financial caveat "Past performance is not indicative of future results" has enough truth behind it to be applicable. 

The "rules" are, as I say below, "guidance" - language is a servant, not a master. 

That said, I repeat that #174 is, for me, definitive. (I am aware of the concept of confirmation bias. )


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## wandle

e2efour said:


> Why do you keep on saying that the woman was not standing behind the captain? Why is that relevant?


That is not what I am saying.
I am saying the sentence means (i.e. the speaker knows and intends) that she was not standing behind the captain. This shows that the sentence is a counterfactual.


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## wandle

e2efour said:


> I did not say that the implications _are_ serious, I said they _would_ be serious. You clearly do not understand or appreciate the difference.


That is difficult to answer without turning it round.


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## wandle

PaulQ said:


> This seems to be a difficult position to sustain because were it true, then there could be no evolution of language.


That simply does not follow. If that conclusion were true, there could never be any evolution of innate capacities. However, biology shows that all life forms have innate capacities which evolve. The mechanisms of language evolution are well understood.


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## PaulQ

wandle said:


> However, biology shows that all life forms have innate capacities which evolve.


It think question is "What causes the evolution?" - the answer is "random mutations."


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## wandle

PaulQ said:


> It think question is "What causes the evolution?" - the answer is "random mutations."


This seems to mean you agree that they evolve. We ought to clarify that linguistic evolution is a cultural phenomenon within a biological framework. There is clearly evolution at the cultural level, as comparative linguistics show. There is, as far as I know, no reason to doubt evolution at the biological level.

Compare music. I share the view that humans have an innate capacity for music. Does that mean music cannot evolve? And is there no such thing as singing out of tune?


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## siares

Thank you for answers!

_e told me if he was walking on the street the police would stop him to check him out and then they would find he was not wanted for anything._


Phoebe1200 said:


> Can't these examples be understood as referring to the future?


I think in the above it is the habitual past 'would', but depending on the context could be seen as predictions (guesses) about what most likely happened in the past; if we know the character we guess that this happened to him...
This is an interesting thread about making predictions (guesses) about one-off actions in the past:
would have drunk or will have drunk


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## PaulQ

wandle said:


> This seems to mean you agree that they evolve.


Well, of course I do! It is the lack of rules that allows this. However, you said:


wandle said:


> I for one have no doubt that grammar is a set of rules, without which we could not achieve communication.


My point is that "hard science" - maths, physics, chemistry - has "rules"; softer sciences have guidance. 2 + 2 = 4 does not evolve or mutate because of rules but "I wot not what thou sayest" does evolve because no grammar is a "rule".


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## wandle

The fact that language evolves does not mean that it has no rules. On the contrary, it evolves according to rules which are well understood and it expresses rules which can be studied across different languages, each representing a different development of the same basic human capacity.

I do find it odd that people who carefully observe language rules in speech and writing can maintain those rules do not exist.


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## PaulQ

wandle said:


> I do find it odd that people who carefully observe language rules in speech and writing can maintain those rules do not exist.


I don't think you do.  Rules state what will be - guidance states what has been.


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## wandle

PaulQ said:


> I don't think you do


 Yes I do. It is puzzling. You have to follow the rules yourself in order to say they do not exist.
I wonder if you are taking the word 'rules' in the sense of orders given by authority. That is not what language rules are.


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## e2efour

siares said:


> _He told me if he was walking on the street the police would stop him to check him out and then they would find he was not wanted for anything._
> I think in the above it is the habitual past 'would', but depending on the context could be seen as predictions (guesses) about what most likely happened in the past; if we know the character we guess that this happened to him...


This is indeed an open conditional, but the tenses are backshifted because of _He told me_. Without this we have _If I was walking on the street, the police would stop me _(open past conditional) or _If I was/were walking on the street, the police would stop me_ (remote future conditional).


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## wandle

'Would' in those examples means 'was (or were) in the habit of' doing whatever it was.

If we put them into direct speech, they become general statements, i.e. open present conditionals (first conditionals):

'If (or 'when') I am walking on the street, the police stop me (or 'keep stopping me')'. etc.


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## e2efour

Here's yet another example of an open past condition (past simple).

_If you saw a girl in his garden _[last night]_, it {will probably have been / would probably be} his daughter._
(Declerck and Reed,_ Conditionals,_ 2001)


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## wandle

e2efour said:


> Here's yet another example of an open past condition (past simple).


Still not comparable to the topic sentence, which can only be past closed (unreal, hypothetical).


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## siares

wandle said:


> Still not comparable to the topic sentence, which can only be past closed (unreal, hypothetical).


Could you treat it for a second as if there weren't the context (the following sentence about the absence of the stain)? Let's imagine another sentence follows instead (because this is how the OP has been explained by others)

_If she stood behind the captain when he was struggling, there would be a stain there. 
If she stood in front of the captain when he was struggling, the stain would be there.
If she stood left of the captain when he was struggling, the stain would be there.
Let's go check where it is._
Do you still say that this is closed, and if so, how?



e2efour said:


> _If you saw a girl in his garden _[last night]_, it {will probably have been / would probably be} his daughter._


Good find, e2e4, but not the same as OP, because someone's being someone's daughter is a lasting state, and also not a consequence of her being or not in a garden.
Same for _If he was telling the truth_.... not causal enough for my taste.
the implications are serious if and because the aliens landed, not if or because someone was or not telling truth about them.


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## Thomas Tompion

siares said:


> _If she stood behind the captain when he was struggling, there would be a stain there. Let's go check if it is really there._
> Do you still say that this is closed, and if so, how?


Of course it's not closed, Siares.  They don't know if there's a stain there and they are looking to the stain as evidence that she stood behind the Captain when he was struggling.

It's absolutely standard detective-fiction language except that_ if she stood_ would normally be_ if she was standing_, and entirely idiomatic.


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## wandle

siares said:


> If she stood behind the captain when he was struggling, there would be a stain there.


Let me give another quote from the Oxford English Grammar:


> Future and present hypothetical conditions take a past in the conditional clause and a past modal in the host clause.


Your example has past in the conditional clause ('stood') and past modal in the host clause ('would').

Consequently that sentence can only be a future or a present hypothetical (closed, unreal) condition. It must refer either to the present or the future.
That may sound odd, but that is the rule for those conditionals. That is the way they are formed in English.

However, to make it refer to the past, all you need to do is put the word 'had' in front of 'stood'. That will make it a closed past in the conditional clause followed by a present consequence. In other words, in the 0,1,2,3 classification, it will be a mixed 3rd/2nd conditional. But it will still be closed.


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## siares

Thank you, Thomas Tompion, wandle.


wandle said:


> past modal


Aha..
But 'would' is also used in present contexts, even if I can't think of a good example (maybe others could help). 
- Who did this? - That would be me.


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## Cagey

When a thread has become so long that it is unreasonable to expect participants to have read all that came before it, it is bound to become repetitive. 

In addition, experience in this and other threads shows that disagreements about the classification and proper construction of conditionals are incapable of resolution. 

This thread is closed.

Anyone who is interested in the range of views on these topics is welcome to read as much of this thread as they have patience for. 

Cagey, moderator.


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