Quote:
|
Originally Posted by X Mode Good question.
That statement sounds like the speaker might be talking about something that is only true for the present circumstance. However, one can also understand this as being true "whenever Joe is late", that is to say all the time. |
That's an interesting extension of the 'zero conditional'. Your reasoning seems perfectly clear to me.
But let's imagine our student returns at this point. He consults his course book and finds something like this under 'zero conditional':
Quote:
We use the so-called zero conditional when the result of the condition is always true, like a scientific fact. Take some ice. Put it in a saucepan. Heat the saucepan. What happens? The ice melts (it becomes water). You would be surprised if it did not. So:
IF condition | result
If you heat ice | it melts. Notice that we are thinking about a result that is always true for this condition. The result of the condition is an absolute certainty. We are not thinking about the future or the past, or even the present. We are thinking about a simple fact. We use the present simple tense to talk about the condition. We also use the present simple tense to talk about the result. The important thing about the zero conditional is that the condition always has the same result.
Tip: we can use 'when' instead of 'if': when you heat ice, it melts.
|
Our student applies this to our example.
1. If Joe's late, he's stuck in traffic.
It's a zero conditional. So according to the book, this must be the condition:
If Joe's late (= if you heat ice)
And this must be the result:
he's stuck in traffic. (= it melts)
But (the student thinks) isn't it the other way round? Isn't 'being late' the
result of 'being stuck in traffic'? i.e. if Joe is late, it's
because he's stuck in traffic.
How do we help the student here? Do we have to revise the definition of the 'zero conditional', to take account of the fact that the 'result' may be in the IF clause?
MrP