Do conditionals not change its tense even in subordinate clause?
The direct discourse:
He told his wife "I would eliminate the tax if you rode naked..."
(in subordinate clause)
=> He told his wife that he would eliminate the tax if she rode naked....
What about in factual conditionals?
He told his wife "I will eiminate the tax if you ride naked..."
=>He told his wife that he I will eliminate the tax if she rides naked..."
Does it change like this? How do you change factual and counterfactual conditionals? Does it have any fixed rules or not?
ex)...Lady Godiva, however, was a caring woman. She wanted her husband to stop taxing the people, but he would not. One day, he told his wife that he would eliminate the tax if she rode naked through the street of Conventry on market day.
Thanks a lot, master!
I think factual conditional in subordinate clause can't exist as it happened already, as you explained. Then in subordinate clause, is only counter-factual conditional possible? I think you understand what I'm saying.
In the following example, how can we judge if "if I ever got lost" is a factual or counter-factual conditional? I mean, if it means the past of "if I ever get lost"- factual(conditional1) or the past of "if I ever got lost"-counter-factual(conditional2)
g.w(Kenny is a little boy ghost who died recently)
Mel- I think I know where your mommy is. Want me to take you to her?
Kenny- She told me to wait if I ever got lost.
Mel- But maybe she doesn't know where to look.
Last edited by keannu; 15-Sep-2011 at 04:28.
"If you ride, I will eliminate the tax". He said that if she rode, he would eliminate.
"If you rode", I would eliminate the tax. He said that if she rode, he would eliminate.
"If you had ridden, I would have eliminated the tax". He said that if she had ridden, he would have eliminated the tax.
It is one of those quirks of the language that we cannot tell from the reported speech whether the original was a first or second conditional.
If we said, "He said that if she were to ride, he would eliminate the tax", we could make explicit the second, hypothetical, conditional meaning. It doesn't appear to be possible to make explicit the first, real conditional, meaning.
Now I realize it's impossible to tell the two, so I've been always worried about it whenever I had to explain to my student. But now, I feel so evacuated from the prison of the confusion, hahaha! Now, at least I know I don't have to worry about it as no test or person will ask me about such questions impossible to answer.
Thank you, Master!