[Grammar] conditional If

[abo.omar]

1-If I have one million dollars,I will buy a car.
2-If Omar had one million dollars,I would buy a car.
Can we say that in number one I have 900000 dollars, In number two Omar has only 1000 dollars?
Is it acceptable?

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

1-If I have one million dollars, (space) I will buy a car.

That means you're going to count your money to see if you have a million dollars. If you do, you'll buy a car.

2-If Omar had one million dollars, (space) I would buy a car.

That means that Omar does not have a million dollars. If he did, then you'd buy a car. But he doesn't, so you're not going to. (I think that if he had a million dollars, he should buy you a car!)

Can we say that in 1 I have $900,000,

No. We don't know how much you have, and you don't either. Maybe you have a million, and maybe you don't. You need to to count it to find out how much you have.

In 2 Omar has only $1,000?

No. We know he has less than a million, but we don't know how much less. He might have nothing. He might have almost a million.

Is it acceptable?

No.

Most people wouldn't wait until they had a million dollars to buy a car.

And no one would wait for someone else to have a million to buy a car!

Tell us more about what you're trying to say.

 

[Tdol]

You can say that you are closer to buying the car in terms of probability, so having more money than he does makes sense to me. However, he could have a relative who has just died and who will leave him a fortune, in which case he is closer than you.

 

[abo.omar]

Most people wouldn't wait until they had a million dollars to buy a car.

And no one would wait for someone else to have a million to buy a car!

Tell us more about what you're trying to say.

I wanted to simplify the difference between the first and second conditional , so I gave the two examples with the approximately amount of money.
I said "1-If I have one million dollars,I will buy a car." means it is possible to buy a car .I am about to have its price.On the other hand, in the second sentence I am still away of its price.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I wanted to simplify the difference between the first and second conditional , so I gave the two examples with the approximately amount of money.
I said "1-If I have one million dollars, (space) I will buy a car" means it is possible to buy a car.

It's possible to buy hundreds of cars for a million dollars. I think you're just asking whether using have means that you might possibly have that much money. I answered that above. I said yes.

If Omar had one million dollars, (space) I would buy a car.
When you say that, you're talking about two people: you and Omar. If you and Omar are the same person, either say:

- "If I had a million dollars, I would buy a car."
- "If Omar had a million dollars, he would buy a car."

I think you're asking whether the word had means that you definitely don't have it. I answered that above, too. I said yes..

[In the first] I am about to have its price.
No, it doesn't mean you're going to have it soon. "If I have" means you might or might not. You don't know.

On the other hand, in the second sentence I am still away from its price.

Yes, "If I had" means you don't have it. But you asked if they meant you had specific amounts of money: $900,000 and $1,000. No, that's not what they mean. I said that above, too.

I hope it's clearer now. In the first, you might have the money. In the second, you don't have it.

 

[Tdol]

If the bank give me the promotion I deserve [good possibility], I will buy the one-million-dollar car.
If I won the lottery [low probability], I would buy the one-million-dollar car.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

. . . If I won the lottery [low probability], I would buy the one-million-dollar car.

I wonder about that. If I'd bought the lottery ticket, I'd say "If I win," even though it's unlikely. I'd only say "won" if I didn't have a ticket and was just fantasizing.

Maybe it can mean the same thing either way.

And I do like the million-dollar car concept.

 

[jutfrank]

I wonder about that. If I'd bought the lottery ticket, I'd say "If I win," even though it's unlikely. I'd only say "won" if I didn't have a ticket and was just fantasizing.

I agree with you, Charlie.

We had a discussion on exactly this question a few weeks ago here on this forum. I was saying that if a speaker says if I won, it's because he's not imagining any possibility at all of winning. It's seen as purely hypothetical. This may be because he doesn't have a ticket, but it might also be the case that he does have a ticket but that, for whatever reason, he thinks there is no real possibility of winning. Otherwise he'd say if I win.

Now there may be reasons that the speaker deliberately chooses to present the winning as hypothetical, even, say, if he has already won, but in general, I think it's a useful rule to remember that when we use second conditionals, it's because we see there being no chance of the state or event happening.

 

[abo.omar]

I agree with you, Charlie.

We had a discussion on exactly this question a few weeks ago here on this forum. I was saying that if a speaker says if I won, it's because he's not imagining any possibility at all of winning. It's seen as purely hypothetical. This may be because he doesn't have a ticket, but it might also be the case that he does have a ticket but that, for whatever reason, he thinks there is no real possibility of winning. Otherwise he'd say if I win.

Now there may be reasons that the speaker deliberately chooses to present the winning as hypothetical, even, say, if he has already won, but in general, I think it's a useful rule to remember that when we use second conditionals, it's because we see there being no chance of the state or event happening.

That means it depends on the speaker.

 

[abo.omar]

If the bank give me the promotion I deserve [good possibility], I will buy the one-million-dollar car.
If I won the lottery [low probability], I would buy the one-million-dollar car.

If the bank give me the promotion I deserve , I will buy the one-million-dollar car.
That means you feel you may get it soon.

If the bank gave me the promotion I deserve , I would buy the one-million-dollar car.
That means you feel you may not get it soon.
Right?

 

[jutfrank]

If the bank gives me the promotion I deserve, I will buy the one-million-dollar car.
That means you feel you may get it soon.

If the bank gave me the promotion I deserve, I would buy the one-million-dollar car.
That means you feel you may not get it soon.
Right?

Put very simply, yes, that's good enough for me.

 

[abo.omar]

Put very simply, yes, that's good enough for me.

In post number 7 ,it was written 'give' not 'gives'. I thought because it is a 'collective noun'. Why did you write it with 's'?
i

 

[Tdol]

I wonder about that. If I'd bought the lottery ticket, I'd say "If I win," even though it's unlikely. I'd only say "won" if I didn't have a ticket and was just fantasizing.

I see the idea, but I used to work in a betting shop and think most gamblers know in their hearts that the house always wins. But we can change it from the gambler to an honest spectator, who would use would.

 

[Tdol]

American speakers tend to use a singular verb after collective nouns. British speakers can use the singular or the plural, though the plural is probably winning the war. However, in cases where the British see the collective as a whole rather than a group, the singular still wins- BrE speakers may say that the company want to buy another company, but they will say that the company is being sold.

 

[jutfrank]

I do not agree.

Yes, I know. I remember from previous discussions about this. You might remember that in my way of understanding, there is no 'more real' or 'less real', but only either real or unreal.

I think that this difference of understanding is fascinating, but also probably too profound and abstract to try and thrash out here. In any case, I will bear this difference in mind the next time this point issue comes up, in order to avoid any contradiction.

 

[jutfrank]

I am not alone in my understanding of 'second' conditionals:

That may be the case, but it may not be.

Are you suggesting that you have your own understanding? Or just that you defer to Leech, Huddleston, and Pullum? Even so, you do have to interpret what they mean, when they use very abstract psychological ideas about such things as possibilty, reality, etc.

Where I think we disagree (please correct me if you think I'm wrong) is on the interpretation and/or accuracy of this (bold) part in Leech:

The second statement does not rule out the possibility of snow but, on the other hand, it is more disbelieving (and less pessimistic) than the real condition of:If it snows tomorrow, the match will have to be cancelled.

and these parts of H & P:

The remote type, by contrast,generally presents the fulfilment of the condition as a more remote possibility. So [iiib] suggests a readiness to believe he doesn't love her; this is the version I'd use, for example, in a context where he is not planning to change his job and I'm arguing from this that he doesn't love her. Similarly, [ivb] presents your leaving now as somewhat less likely than in the case of [iva].

 

[jutfrank]

Okay, Piscean, I understand. We can agree to disagree on some points, then.

Let's try to remember this the next time the issue comes up so that we can give learners clear and useful advice.

 

[jutfrank]

I'm afraid I will always have to make my opinion clear if the need arises.

Of course.

I believe very strongly that "it's a useful rule to remember that when we use second conditionals, it's because we see there being no chance of the state or event happening" is simply not true.

Yes, I said I fully understand this but that I disagree. We've gone over this. We agree to disagree.

there has been general agreement on the 'meanings' conveyed by most conditional sentences. Learners need to know this.

Hmm. Up to a point, certainly. However, if what you claim is the case, this doesn't mean that there has been a similarly clear agreement in psycholinguistics or philosophy. In fact, it may well be that grammarians tend to be more conservative in their approach to meaning than others, which I suspect may be the case here. To make a generalisation, they certainly seem to me to be less precise and less in-depth regarding the meaning of abstract ideas such as conditionality, counterfactuality, possibilty, reality, than many philosophers and semanticists.

 

[jutfrank]

When discussing what people mean and understand by the use of a past/preterit tense when used in the protasis (the if- clause), they are not concerned with the philosophical concept of conditionality.

I don't think I follow. How is the meaning of the condition clause not concerned with conditionality? Do you mean that the conditionality comes from the entire thought, not the protasis alone?

I have to confess that I do not understand what you mean by 'more conservative in their approach to meaning'. Many modern writers on grammar devote a great deal of attention to the precise meaning of the terms they use in their academic discipline. In the introduction to his work on English verbs*, Declerck for example, takes 77 pages to define and clarify the terminology he proposes to use.

My point here, however accurate, was that it is not a grammarian's job to concern himself with meaning as much as it is a semanticist's or a philosopher's job. I assume that when a modern grammarian writes a book, a lot of the ideas about meaning come from work already done by other (non-grammarian) academics. That may be an incorrect assumption.

However, in what we are discussing, precise definitions or deep philosophical thoughts about abstract ideas are not relevant.

Or not possible. What exactly are we discussing, by the way? It seems that your main aim here is to challenge what I said in post #8.

We are dealing with one point: You think that when we use second conditionals, it's because we see there being no chance of the state or event happening.

Okay, yes, let's stick tightly to this point. If you are going to challenge this, then I really need to expand much more on what I meant, because I think you may have misunderstood. Please remember that in post #8, I did attempt to make it clear that I was providing what I thought was a generally useful way of looking at things. This is a pedagogical question. If you disagree, then okay, fine.

I think that, while the speaker sees a future situation mentioned in what I call hypothetical conditionals as less likely than a future situation in what I call predictive conditionals, the situation is rarely intended or understood to be counterfactual.

Yes, that's right. It would be unusual for a speaker to consider a future event as a fact, and so a future situation is equally unlikely to be counterfactual.

The fact that 'second conditional' utterances about present time are counterfactual does not mean that those about future situations must be.

No. Is that what you thought I was saying? I didn't mean to say that. I believe that facts relate to only past and present events. I don't believe that there are future facts. (Well, actually, my own view on this his is not quite that simple. Do you really want me to go into this?)

We don't need experts on philosophy or semantics to know that one of us is mistaken.

What is that supposed to mean?!

The fact that that people who have devoted most of their working lives to studying English grammar** have similar thoughts to mine does not, of course, prove that my ideas are right

Absolutely. Of course I do understand, though, that it gives you a sense of confidence that you are right.

You may have realised after many of our previous discussions that to claim that you are right simply because you are repeating what Quirk or Huddleston and Pullum say is not an effective means of persuading me.

but it does suggest that I am not just a deluded maverick.

I do not for a second believe that you are either deluded or a maverick. If you are calling me this, okay, I hear you. I have no response to make. There is no need for snide remarks.

Do you really want to carry on with this discussion? I'm not finding it enjoyable or educational. Shall we just wait until the next time this same issue comes up?

 

[abo.omar]

If I were a fruit, I would be an apple. ( no chance to happen)
If I were a doctor ,I would help you . (no chance to happen because I am an engineer now) ( a little chance to happen because I am still 12 years old. I should study hard)
If I were rich , I would buy a car.(a little chance to buy because I am poor. I should word hard to get more money)
I am sure I am away from your discussion but just for participating:-? .