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Anonymous Posted 15 years ago
Grammar

Conditional sentences

Do the conjunctions "as long as" and "unless" follow the same rules of sentence structure as the conditionals constructed with "if"? Do we use the same choice of verb tenses as we would for the Conditional sentences of type 1, type 2 or type 3. For example, can the sentence "If I had had a car, I would have come on time." be written "As long as I had had a car, I would have come on time." ?
  

Top answer

With unless you can use the same tense patterns, for example, I would not buy that car unless I were rich. But you don't have to. Karen never called Jan unless she had something really important to say.

— CalifJim

  • With unless you can use the same tense patterns, for example, I would not buy that car unless I were rich.
  • But you don't have to.
  • Karen never called Jan unless she had something really important to say.
  • _____________ The same is true for as long as , but my guess is that the conditional structures are more rarely seen in this case.
  • As long as she had to get up anyway, I asked her to get me a beer from the fridge.
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2 Answers
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With unless you can use the same tense patterns, for example,

I would not buy that car unless I were rich.

But you don't have to.

Karen never called Jan unless she had something really important to say.
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The same is true for as long as, but my guess is that the conditional structures are more rarely seen
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Well, maybe, but your example (As long as I had had a car, I would have come on time) does not really make semantic sense to me. Do you have another example? Be sure it is a natural utterance of some communicative value.
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