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Jonathan1 Posted 11 years ago
Grammar
Conditional
Hello, is the following sentence correct?
"If this question was asked 30-40 years ago for example, I guess that the answer was unequivocal."
It seems not to belong to any of the three conditionals, since the form in the above sentence is "If... was... was...".
The second conditional is used when something is very unlikely to happen, and the third one is used when something is impossible to happen because something different already happened in the past (we don't know if the question was actually asked in the past or not).
I would like an explanation.
Thanks in advance!
"If this question was asked 30-40 years ago for example, I guess that the answer was unequivocal."
It seems not to belong to any of the three conditionals, since the form in the above sentence is "If... was... was...".
The second conditional is used when something is very unlikely to happen, and the third one is used when something is impossible to happen because something different already happened in the past (we don't know if the question was actually asked in the past or not).
I would like an explanation.
Thanks in advance!
Top answer
There may be certain ways that this sentence could technically be explained or justified, but to me it effectively seems like an error. This would be more usual: If this question had been asked 30-40 years ago for example, I guess that the answer would have been unequivocal.
- There may be certain ways that this sentence could technically be explained or justified, but to me it effectively seems like an error.
- This would be more usual: If this question had been asked 30-40 years ago for example, I guess that the answer would have been unequivocal.
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4 Answers
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There may be certain ways that this sentence could technically be explained or justified, but to me it effectively seems like an error. This would be more usual:
If this question had been asked 30-40 years ago for example, I guess that the answer would have been unequivocal.
If this question had been asked 30-40 years ago for example, I guess that the answer would have been unequivocal.
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I thought about this formulation with the third conditional, but it indicates that the question wasn't asked in the past.
What should I write if I don't know whether the question was asked in the past or not?
What should I write if I don't know whether the question was asked in the past or not?
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Jonathan1I thought about this formulation with the third conditional, but it indicates that the question wasn't asked in the past.Normally yes, but I think in this case not necessarily. "had been" could be referring to an imagined or hypothetical occasion when the question may have been asked, rather than a real occasion when it wasn't.
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