Is the "doubly remote" conditional construction optional?

Question

BACKGROUND

In the 2002 reference grammar by Huddleston and Pullum (et al.), The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), Anita Mittwoch and Rodney Huddleston and Peter Collins talk about "the doubly remote conditional construction" on page 754:

The doubly remote conditional construction

[48 ]

• i. If you had told me you were busy I would have come tomorrow. <-- [past-future]

• ii. If you had come tomorrow you would have seen the carnival. <-- [future-future]

• iii. If your father had been alive today he would have been distraught to see his business disintegrating like this. <-- [present-present]

(I've marked some verbal clusters in bold to indicate the doubly remote construction. I've also added the brackets to indicate the respective temporal situation of the protasis and apodosis as describe in CGEL. Note that in [i ] the verb cluster "had told" is not a doubly remote construction but a past remote construction where the past tense of "had" expresses modal remoteness and the perfect construction temporal meaning.)

The authors go on to say:

Where the time is future the doubly remote construction indicates not only that P and Q are false, but also that the possibility of the future situation being actualised has already been foreclosed by a past event. In [i-ii ], for example, it might be that I or you have come today, with the assumption that that precludes our coming again tomorrow.

QUESTION

In [i ] and [ii ], let's assume that I and you have come today, respectively, and therefore that I and you cannot come again tomorrow, which is exactly the same situation as describe as an example in CGEL. In this situation, is it possible not to use the doubly remote constructions as follows?

• [i' ] If you had told me you were busy I would come tomorrow.

• [ii' ] If you came tomorrow you would see the carnival.

Answer 1

I'd like to ask JK2 -- can you talk about what motivates you to ask your original question? I'm interested to know how you are hoping the answer will be helpful for you -- as a teacher? As a scholar? As a student? As an ELL doing your best to communicate with native English speakers? If I understand your motivation, it will be easier for me to say something that will be useful for you.

There's been some discussion about i, ii and iii being, shall we say, far fetched. Let's see if I can create some context and some more conceivable sentences.

i''. Let's say I've just arrived in northern Europe on Easter Monday, but I didn't realize Easter Monday and Tuesday are big deal there, with EVERYTHING closed and taxi drivers very scarce at the airport. I say to my host, "If you had told me everything would be closed today and tomorrow, I would have come on Wednesday."

How's that? Wednesday is in the future, but the sentence doesn't sound so weird any more.

ii''. My host responds, "But if you had come on Wednesday, you wouldn't have seen my cousin Margritt, who always comes to visit on Easter Tuesday."

Tuesday and Wednesday are in the future.

iii''. My host continues, "Careful what you say tomorrow when Margritt comes! If she had been here today, and heard you say that, she would have been offended."

Personally, this whole thing makes me think of someone who spends a lot of time sorting the potatoes by size into six piles -- tiny, small, medium, medium large, large, and massive, in preparation for peeling ALL of them. (I guess this came to mind because in the region where my German in-laws live, the potatoes are out of this world, and the custom is to have potatoes with dinner every day.)

I think that native speakers and ELLs can all happily express themselves with the basic pattern, If ... had [past participle], ... would have [past participle] ... without worrying about whether it's [past - future] etc. etc.

Now it's time to address the question you wrote. I will rephrase it slightly, for clarity (for my own benefit!).

is it possible to avoid using the doubly remote constructions as follows?

[i'] If you had told me you were busy I would come tomorrow.

[ii'] If you came tomorrow you would see the carnival.

If I assume you are an ELL working on improving your understanding and use of the basic grammar pattern I showed, and are asking for feedback about the two alternatives you wrote -- sorry if this is a wrong guess -- then here is my answer:

i': You have a small grammatical error here. If you want the second part to be I would come tomorrow, then the first part should be If you told me.

Here's an example of this, taken from https://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/grammar/conditional-sentences: If I found her address, I would send her an invitation.

Here's one that to me feels more authentic: If I wanted your help, I would ask for it!

ii': This one is grammatically correct, but it doesn't express the full guilt-trip flavor of ii. I don't think it's really equivalent.

Answer 2

First of all, nobody says "I and you"; they say "you and I" to be polite.

Secondly, in your question you use "respectively" and only give one thing referred to by it. One says: "The sky and ground are blue and brown, respectively." Two pairs of things, matched.

[i'] should be "If you had told me you were busy I would have come tomorrow." (Instead of today.)

[ii'] could be "If you came tomorrow you would be able to see the carnival." Here we are talking about the future. The possibility is still open.

If he loved his girlfriend he would fly out to her tomorrow. Sure, why not. If he loved his girlfriend he would stop asking her hypothetical questions about carnivals and take her to a movie.

If I found her address, I would send her an invitation. No. You're mixing up future and past. If I [had] found her address, I would have sent an invitation. If I find it in the future, I will send her an invitation.

Have fun!

Answer 3

If you had told me you were busy I would come tomorrow.

How possible is it for you to now tell me, back in the past, that you were busy?

If it's not possible for you to do that bit of time-travelling, in order to set up the conditions where you could come tomorrow, then you won't be able to come tomorrow. i.e. the doubly conditional phrasing is the correct one.

[ii' ] If you came tomorrow you would see the carnival.

This phrasing is correct, as far as it goes, but it's saying something different to the original phrasing.

The original phrasing

ii. If you had come tomorrow you would have seen the carnival. <-- [future-future]

is actually saying that because you came today, you won't be able to see the carnival. (By implication, it's saying the carnival won't get here until tomorrow, or somesuch. The other inference is that you had an either/or choice between visiting today and visiting tomorrow, rather than a both/and choice. )

Answer 4

First of all, (i) and (ii) are totally impossible. "...would have come tomorrow" does not make sense in any universe I can conceive of. You cannot say you would have come tomorrow, because you do not yet know that you did not come tomorrow. You won't know till tomorrow that you didn't/don't/won't come tomorrow. (even though Huddleston claims the "possibility of the future situation being actualised is already foreclosed by a past event")

Having said that, yes, (i') and (ii') are better, in that they are slightly less incomprehensible.

To make sense, though, I would say:

• (i) If you had told me you would be busy today, I would have planned to come tomorrow instead.

• (ii) If you could have come tomorrow, you would have been able to see the carnival.

• (iii) If your father were alive today he would be distraught....

In short, I reject Huddleston's tacit hypothesis that there is any good use for the doubly-remote conditional which could not be handled more gracefully and intelligibly via other constructions.

(I don't deny that the doubly-remote conditional exists; only that there is a practical use for it). That is to say, if native speakers can get by without it for a lifetime, I doubt ELLs would suffer much by not mastering it.

Answer 5

Cases ii and iii are over-engineered, and of questionable correctness. Maybe older usage, but certainly not canonical in modern English.

The third conditional form (past perfect => would have + past participle) has a pretty well defined use, which is past-past.

For anything improbable that is present there's the second form (past simple => would + base form). So, the correct way to phrase iii should be:

iii. If your father was alive today he would be distraught to see his business disintegrating like this. <-- [present-present]

Case ii [future-future] is slightly more tricky. It still falls under the second conditional, but somehow we need to express the fact that the condition is not in the present but in the future. For that, we use the correct auxiliary verb, and put that in past simple form. Like this:

ii. If you were to come tomorrow you would see the carnival. <-- [future-future]

It is utterly wrong to use past perfect, of all things (i.e. "would have seen the carnival"), to express a future event.