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Endeavour Posted 10 years ago
Grammar

Conditional Clauses (Mixing neutral and subjunctive forms)

Dear all,

I read online about mixing conditional clauses but they mostly just talked about mixing type 2 (improbable present) and type 3 (impossible past), but I wish to know if I could mix neutral and subjunctive clauses together. Please could you check the following phrases to verify my understanding toward them and that they are used correctly?

1. If their daughter stole their money, they would scold her when she comes home. (My interpretation: first, the daughter is currently out and is not at home. Secopnd, as the first clause is a neutral statement, the writer did not state whether he/she believed that stealing actually happened or not, but for the second clause, the writer suggested even if the daughter really stole the money, her parents are unlikely to scold her, perhaps due to their leniency toward their daughter, which is why the second clause is, contrary to the neutral form of the first clause, in subjunctive form on its own. On the other hand, if the writer believed the parents will punish her daughter's stealing for certain if the daughter committed that, the writer would have used writer "they will scold her" instead without the subjunctive form.)

2. When he comes back from traveling, he would call me. (My interpretation: he will surely come back after traveling, but I am not confident he would call me, because perhaps we are not in a good relationship. On the contrary, if the writer wrote "when he comes back from traveling, he will call me", then this suggests the writer thinks "he" will surely come back, and at the same time the writer is confident "he" will give him a call.

Please kindly let me know if I have used the about mixes correctly and whether my interpretations toward them are right.

Thank you so much!

Cheers,
Endeavour
  
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