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Originally Posted by MrPedantic 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':
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 |
Perhaps in this case we can say that "if" means "whenever".
Whenever Joe's late, he's stuck in traffic.
I guess it goes to show that all the ways in which grammatical structures are defined in grammar books and course books don't, and perhaps can't, take into account everything that, in reality, we may or may not say.
Everything we say isn't limited to form and function as indicated by books. I think this might be especially true with conditional sentences.
Joe first has to be late, then the speaker can say he's stuck in traffic. This logic is based on the speaker's view of the situation, that is to say he knows Joe very well. The condition and the result are understood in the mind of the speaker.
First Joe has to be late. Then I can conclude that he's stuck in traffic. I cannot conclude this unless I first know that Joe is late. The speaker would have his or her own logic in this case. It's a very confident and strong statement. Nonetheless, it's what the speaker thinks.
The speaker's conclusion is the result of finding out that Joe is late or is going to be late.
If you heat ice, it melts. Okay
If ice melts, you heat it. ???
If it rains, the ground gets wet.
If the ground gets wet, it rains. ???
It seems that conditions and results based on human action cannot always be seen from the limited perspective that we view conditions and results based on things which occur that humans have no control over.
If the sun's out, we take a walk in the park.
If we take a walk in the park, the sun's out.
If Joe's late, he's stuck in traffic.
If Joe's stuck in traffic he's late.
Perhaps in this case we can say that "if" means "whenever".
Is all this too complicated for our student? I think a student who can think of such a question in English will be able to understand such an explanation in English.
This is a good question, however. It's interesting to consider.
I don't want to downplay the importance of it, but I'm not so sure of its true practical value. Though as I said, it's an interesting question.
