[Grammar] Your child might/may do better if...

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NAL123

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Mar 14, 2020
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Hindi
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India
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Consider this sentence of mine, please:

1) Your child might do better if she got/had a different teacher.

Can I use "may" in sentence 1)?

2) Your child may do better if she got/had a different teacher.
 
No.

I would not be surprised if some disagree with me. Some people use may and might in odd ways these days.

Would you call sentence 1) in the OP a pure second conditional or would you call it a mixed 1st/2nd conditional?
 
No.

I would not be surprised if some disagree with me. Some people use may and might in odd ways these days.


These days I think that most native speakers would see no difference.
 
I would not use the word 'pure', but I would say that #1 is what many would label a 'second conditional'.
I was revisiting this thread and this question came to my mind:

You said above that you would not call the following a "pure" second conditional:

1) Your child might do better if she got/had a different teacher.

But what about the following:

Your child could do better if she got/had a different teacher.

Is it a "pure" second conditional?
 
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