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Kooyeen Posted 19 years ago
Grammar

Conditionals and modals in reported speech

0 Hi,02br
00I'm so confused (and I'll tell you later why). I hope this is not going to be a long and stressing thread, anyway let's start with these:02br
01ol
    01li
  1. 00If I had the money, I would go to the United States.02li
    2. 01li
  2. 00If you have a PC, you could try searching for help on the net.02li
    3. 01li
  3. 00If your PC keeps on freezing, doesn't connect to the net and doesn't let you save any files, the trojan w.tr.haak could be running in the background.02li
    4. 01li
  4. 00If one day we fighted the Third World War, we might then be not enough to fight the Forth World War.02br
    02li
    5. 02ol
00How would you report the above examples, both backshifting and not backshifting? He said that...02br
00Thank you in advance. 050010id1
  

Top answer

0Hello Kooyeen,02br 02br 00Here are my efforts:02br 02br 001. He said that if he had the money, he would go to the United States OR 02br 02br 001a. 02br 02br 002.

— MrPedantic

  • 0Hello Kooyeen,02br 02br 00Here are my efforts:02br 02br 001.
  • He said that if he had the money, he would go to the United States OR 02br 02br 001a.
  • 02br 02br 002.
  • 02br 02br 003.
  • 02br 02br 004.
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14 Answers
0
0Hello Kooyeen,02br
02br
00Here are my efforts:02br
02br
001. He said that if he had the money, he would go to the United States OR 02br
02br
001a. He said that if he had had the money, he would have gone to the United States.02br
02br
002. He said that if I had a PC, I could try searching for help on the net.02br
0
0
0 Thank you.02br
00Michael Swan thinks the same as you, in reported speech when backshifting, 01b01i00present conditional =01h2

00> past conditional00.02br
00But another grammar book I have (by Cambridge) says nothing about that, it just says that 01i00"could, should, would, might"02i00 don't change when reporting

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0
0 Stay with Swan and MrP. 0-
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0 01blockquote
02br
12br
10There are other websites that don't agree with each other, so I think I have the right to be confused, don't I?12br
12br
12blockquote
10Absolutely. A joyous acceptance of confusion is essential, if you want to understand English grammar.01blockquote
02br
12br
10But
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0 Yes, you are right, I'm going to write a few examples and provide some context.02br
02br
00 May people say that "could, should, might, would" don't change in reported speech. I don't think so, but let's see:02br
01b00I'd like to go to Jenny's party ----> He said he would like to go to Jenny's party02b00 (I would say this is ok only if Jenn
0
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0 Could anyone comment on the previous post, please? I'd really like to know if the sentences and the comments I wrote make sense. Forget about my other posts, they are just confusing, I guess.02br
00Thank you. 050010id1
0
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0Hello Kooyeen02br
02br
01b001. I'd like to go to Jenny's party ----> He said he would like to go to Jenny's party02b00 (I would say this is ok only if Jenny hasn't had the party yet)02br
02br
00— It's also possible that someone would say this, if the party had already happened; but I think your interpretation is more likely.02br
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0 Thank you MrPedantic.02br
00Maybe you've seen I also posted my last post in a new thread. CalifJim replied, and everything seemed ok to him. Maybe there are some differences and preferences between British and American English? For example, this sentence (it's the one about vegetables, only modified a little):02br
02br
01b00You should stay in bed and rest
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0 I see Mr. P.'s point. The compound tenses in English have a very strong counterfactual reading, especially with modals, which may or may not be true in Italian. Because of this, I think there is less of a tendency to pull in these compound tenses for non-counterfactual meanings in English than in Italian.02br
02br
01i00My doctor said I should have stayed in bed
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0
0 Ah, I see... I see it's a mess! In Italian the situation is different. You say it's important whether something is counterfactual or not, well, that's strange. For example you can say "She said she was American" even if she is still American, that is, backshifting has nothing to do with the real situation. But I feel there's something different when we consider modal verbs. For example:02br
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