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INTRODUCTION
In a survey of the most serious teaching problems encountered by ESL teachers in Los
Angeles areas, Covitt (1976) found that conditional sentences ranked 5th.
FORM OF CONDITIONALS
A SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF CONDITIONAL SENTENCES
In either order, the if clause sets up the condition, and the main clause gives the result
or outcome. We will therefore treat the if clause as an adverbial clause of condition.
George will go if I go.
In order to account for the if clause in initial position, we generate the adverbial clause
under the sentence modifier (sm):
We would start with the same base rules used for the second tree diagram and the
mapping rules would be as follows:
Note that then insertion is optional rule that tends to be applied only if the conditional
clause is generated in initial position.
In hypothetical conditionals with initial if clauses containing certain auxiliary verbs such
as had or should, it is possible to delete the initial if; however, when such a deletion takes
a place, subject/operator inversion must follow:
o If the guests should arrive early, no one will be here to greet them.
o Should the guests arrive early, no one will be here to greet them.
CONDITIONAL CLAUSE PRO-FORMS
Halliday and Hasan (1976) Certain pro-forms can be used to replace the entire
conditional clause following if: so is used if the clause is affirmative; not is used if the
clause is negative.
If so, volunteer.
Would you like to make a class presentation? If not, you dont have to.
Factual conditionals include four types: generic, habitual, implicit inference, and
explicit inference.
Generic factual conditionals express relationships that are true and unchanging.
Habitual factual conditionals resemble generic factuals in that they also express a
relationship that is not bounded in time; however, the relationship is based on
habit instead of physical law. Habitual facts express either past or present
relationships that are typically or habitually true.
Note that for both generic and habitual conditionals it is possible to substitute
when or whenever for if and still express more or less the same idea.
o When(ever) you boil water, it vaporizes.
o When(ever) I wash the dishes, sally dries them.
IMPLICIT INFERENCE CONDITIONALS
The normal pattern of this sentence is simple present tense in if clause and
some explicit indication of future time (e.g., will or be going to) in the result
clause.
o If you finish your vegetables, Im going to (gonna) buy you an ice cream
cone.
o If Steve comes to class, he will get the answers to the quiz.
There is also a way to weaken the condition expressed in the if clause of a future
conditional sentence by using the modal should or the verb happen or both of them
together.
should
If it happens to rain, Ill stay home.
Should happen to
The most problematic (perhaps) of the three main types in our description.
Hypothetical conditionals express what the speaker perceives to be unlikely yet possible
events or states in the if clause.
If Joe had the time, he would go to Mexico. (present hypothetical)
Counterfactual conditionals express impossible events or states in the the if clause.
If my grandfather were alive today, he would experience a very different world.
(Present counterfactual)
In hypothetical conditionals the negative quality of the if clause can be even further
weakened so that the possibility of the result occurring becomes stronger:
Should have
If Joe happened to have the time, he would go to Mexico.
Should happen to
Such weakening does not happen in a counterfactual conditional since the if clause is
strongly negated and the condition remains impossible:
Should be
If my grandfather alive today, he would experience a very
Should happen to be different world.
The problem with imaginative conditionals arises in the tense used. The past tense refers
to the present time, and the past perfect tense refers to past time. Furthermore, we have
a vestige of the Old English subjunctive mood in the use of were with singular first and
third person subjects where was is the expected form:
Possible interpretations:
Sentence #1 : The speaker didnt have an executive jet and that he didnt arrive on time.
Sentence # 2: Can mean only that he did have such a jet and thus did arrive on time.
Even in less complicated contexts, there always seems to be a difference between unless
and ifnot:
o If I cant go, Ill call you. (I think Ill be able to go, so I probably wont call you.)
o Unless I can go, Ill call you. (I dont think Ill be able to go, so Ill probably wont call you.)
Thus we conclude that ESL/EFL teachers should refrain from teaching unless as the equivalent
of ifnot. In fact the only reasonable paraphrase relationship involving the above four
subordinators exists between only if with an affirmative result and unless with a negative one:
1st Sentence: The speaker knows that Vienna is expensive but advises that the addressee visit
it despite the cost.
2nd Sentence: The speaker doesnt know definitely whether or not Vienna is expensive there is
a possibility that Vienna is expensive but in any event, the advice is to visit the city.
Note: Even if clause can readily occur initially but that, in the absence of extremely marked
exclamatory intonation, the if clause is strange if it occurs initially in this type of exclamatory
conditional:
o ?If you were the last person on earth, I wouldnt marry you!
o Even if you were the last person on earth, I wouldnt marry you!
WHETHER or NOT
RELATED VERBS
The verb wish is similar to counterfactual conditionals in that the same clauses
that follow wish can also function either as the if clause or the result clause of a
counterfactual conditional:
***The subjective forms that can occur in imaginative if clauses also occur after
wish:
o I wish I were a millionaire.
o If I were a millionaire . . .
*** There is also the more formal and slightly archaic expression would that, which
can be used in exclamatory imaginative conditionals to express wishes:
o Would that I had a Rolls Royce!
(I wish I had a Rolls Royce!)
o Would that I could fly!
(I wish I could fly!)
THE FREQUENCY AND THE USE OF CONDITIONAL SENTENCES
THE MOST FREQUENT CONDITIONAL STRUCTURES
Hill (1960) claimed that English conditional sentences may contain 324 distinct tense-
modal sequences.
Hwang (1979) analyzed a corpus of English speech (63, 746 words) and writing (357,
249 words) representing diverse discourse types and concluded that in addition to
general rules of consistency in tense sequencing, only two statements can be made about
ungrammatical forms in conditional sentences: (1) logical uses of might do not occur in if
clause; (2) subjunctive were and were to do not occur in result clauses:
would
Structure H: If + -past, could have + -en
Might
USES OF CONDITIONALS
Ford and Thompson (1986)
2. Speaking Humurously
USES OF SENTENCE FINAL IF CLAUSES
Only 23 percent of the if clause in Ford and Thompsons (1986) written corpus were in
final position. They found that the following observations accounted for most of their
sentence-final if clauses: