English grammar - Roger Berry 2012
Michael Lewis
D10 Conditionals
Section D Extension
In this section there are two readings. They are on the same topic, sentences expressing conditions, and both are pedagogic in nature, being aimed at teaching materials which present a misleadingly simple (and, at the same time, complicated) picture of this area of English grammar.
Conditional sentences are generally equated with sentences with ’if’, i.e. multiple complex sentences with a subordinate, adverbial clause introduced by ’if’, for example:
’If you listen carefully, you can hear the sea.’
However, there is a mismatch between form and function here (cf. B9). On the one hand, ’if’ does not always signal conditions. Sometimes it can have an idea of ’concession’ (i.e. similar to ’although’), especially when used in a verbless clause:
'They were happy, if exhausted.’
On the other hand, there are many ways of expressing conditions that do not use ’if’: other conjunctions such as ’provided that’, ’as/so long as’; other constructions, such as an imperative plus 'and’ (i.e. a compound rather than a complex sentence):
’Do that and you’ll be sorry.’ (’If you do that . . ’) or inversion:
’Had I known about the problem earlier, I could have done something.’ (See A11) Nevertheless, it is clearly sentences with ’if’ that are the subject of the two readings.
Michael Lewis
D10.1 Michael Lewis (1986) reprinted from The English Verb, Hove: Language Teaching Publications, pp. 148-150.
2 Conditional Sentences
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:
1. If he comes I’ll ask him.
2. If he came I’d ask him.
3. If he’d come I would’ve asked him.
These are frequently referred to as:
1. The first conditional, or likely conditions.
2. The second conditional, or unlikely conditions.
3. The third conditional, or impossible conditions.
The three examples given are all well-formed sentences of types which would be relatively frequent in much written English. Readers may care, however, to examine the following list and mark the sentences which they consider to be well-formed:
1. If he would come, I’d ask him.
2. If he’ll come, I’ll ask him.
3. If he’s come, I’ll ask him.
4. If he’s going to come, I’d ask him.
5. If he could come, I’d ask him.
6. If he can come, I’ll ask him.
7. If he might come, I’ll ask him.
8. If he comes, I’m going to ask him.
9. If we hadn’t been going to ask him, he wouldn’t have been invited.
10. If he hadn’t been invited by us, he wasn’t going to get an invitation at all.
In fact all of these examples are well-formed English sentences. 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 and that there are many more possibilities than those frequently presented in language teaching textbooks. 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.
An understanding of the importance of the verb phrase rather than the sentence has two important practical consequences, one at lower levels and one for more advanced students.
As soon as we turn our attention to the spoken language we note that interchanges such as the following are common:
A Are we going to ask him?
B If we have to.
A Are you going to bring your car?
B If it would help.
A Are you going on Saturday?
B If it doesn’t rain.
In traditional structuralist courses ’the conditional’ is taught at a relatively late stage. In a communicative syllabus this is most unsatisfactory - it is by no means true that because one is a comparative beginner one only wishes to make unqualified remarks. The teaching of ’the conditional’ as if it were a special form is theoretically unsound. There is no reason at all why expressions introduced by if or unless cannot be introduced into a course at a comparatively early stage. This increases the student’s communicative ability, and provides an introduction to the more complex conditional structures which are comparatively common in the written language.
Teachers should also note that introducing would as ’the English conditional’ is extremely, and unnecessarily, confusing. Would frequently occurs in conditional sentences but, as we have seen with the Principle of General Use, it is important to avoid teaching a partial truth as a generally applicable rule. The following are in no sense ’conditional’:
Would you like a cup of tea?
It would take about three days.
It is not uncommon to argue that such sentences contain a ’covert’ condition but, if that is the case, so does: I’m taking my umbrella (even if it isn’t raining yet).
Incidentally, like many conditional clauses in English, this clause does not contain would - further evidence that would is not ’the conditional’ in English. English simply does not have ’a conditional tense’. These difficulties are avoided quite simply if would is treated as a modal auxiliary, and not referred to as ’the conditional’. With modern functional methodology this is not a very radical suggestion. It is clear that expressions such as Would you like a cup of tea? are best explained as ’when you want to offer somebody something, or invite them to do something, use Would you like . . . or Would you like to . . .’. The functional description is a sufficient explanation of the meaning and use of the form. It is confusing and unnecessary to dissect its structural characteristics.
For many school students the main problem with conditionals is one of manipulating the various auxiliaries which occur. Most mistakes are mistakes of form. This suggests that school students do require practice of the forms of such highly occurrent uses as the so-called first, second and third conditionals.
At higher levels, however, students are frequently inhibited from forming natural expressions of their own because of the restrictive rules with which they have been presented. For such students it would be helpful to present them with a large list similar to that presented above and invite them to:
(a) divide the list into those forms which are possible and those which are not (b) discuss together the possible patterns.
The truth towards which they should be led is that the possibilities in conditionals are identical to those in ’non-conditional’ uses.