Unless you had hurried up,

[angliholic]

1. Unless you had hurried up, you would have missed the train.

2. Unless you hurried up, you would miss the train.

3. Unless you hurry up, you will miss th train.


Do they all make sense? If not, which one/ones make/s sense?

[Casiopea]

"We cannot use unless with would to talk about unreal future situations or unless with would have to talk about unreal situations in the past." Read more here.

1. Unless you had hurried up, you would have missed the train.
2. Unless you hurried up, you would miss the train.

All the best.

[BobK]

'Unless I had been watching carefully, I wouldn't have noticed.'

'I woke late and looked at my alarm - I hadn't set it the night before. Unless I hurried, I would miss the train.' (It takes a bit of work to set up the context, but given that it seems OK to me.)

How do these differ from your 2? Is this another BE/AmE difference?



b

[Casiopea]

Mine are taken from the BBC World Service. Here's the link again: Learning English | BBC World Service

[BobK]

Mine are taken from the BBC World Service. Here's the link again: Learning English | BBC World Service

Hmm. I wonder who Roger Woodham is, and what his credentials. He says

And we cannot use unless with would to talk about unreal future situations:

* If he didn't take everything so seriously, he would be much easier to work with.
* If he weren't so bad-tempered, I would help him to get the work done

We cannot use unless with would have to talk about unreal situations in the past either:

* If you hadn't driven so recklessly, you wouldn't have had this accident.
* If you hadn't had that last glass of wine, this would never have happened.

That is, he says what you 'can't' do with unless, but doesn't give examples of 'bad' practice. That's fine in the context of teaching a language learner, but it does nothing to convince me that what I feel is right is wrong.

b

[Casiopea]

Good point, BobK. On my first look at the example sentences, I couldn't make sense out of 1. and 2. As you had found, re-ordering the clauses works, but for me the semantic result was 'unless' = except:

1a. Unless you'd hurried up, you would've missed the train.
1b. You would've missed the train unless/except you'd hurried up.

By the way, Roger Woodham is a teacher of English. He should be listed here but isn't. Hmm. (I know that he's not a university professor (he makes reference to that in one of his examples), but that's like saying he isn't a mechanic. )

All the best.

[BobK]

...
1a. Unless you'd hurried up, you would've missed the train.
1b. You would've missed the train unless/except you'd hurried up.

...

You know this Casi, but I'll just reiterate for new readers:
1a is fine for me.
1b is fine for me with unless. With except, it's possible but sounds odd. I've known a Scot who said this - but his first language was Gaelic. Of course, with different intonation it is acceptable (but means something different): 'You would've missed the train - except [you didn't because] you'd hurried up'. (The past perfect sounds a bit odd in the second clause, but most native speakers I know would accept it.)

Cheers.

b

[Casiopea]

Good summary.