hypothetical sentences

Question

We know that the standard forms of hypothetical sentences are if+p+would and if+pp+would have . But why sometimes these structures are combined so that we see structures like if+p+would have, like what is seen below.

Context:

Perhaps over millennia the transition of once simply functional
emotions into self-conscious feelings flowered when language evolved and these emotions could be acknowledged both internally to oneself and described to others. If love and grief began to be felt and acknowledged as a result of a cognitively fluid emerging consciousness, then a conscious awareness of death would have been truly abhorrent, for the loss of loved ones, let alone one’s self, might be intolerable.

Another example:

If I were in your shoes, I would have done the same thing.

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

red appleBut why ~~sometimes~~ are these structures ~~are~~ sometimes combined so that ... ?

I suspect there is a different reason in each case, if a reason can even be found.

I suspect the writer was in the mind set of the past tense after having written "flowered" and "could", so he just continued that past tense with "If ... began ...". Somewhere after that, the writer "comes to his senses" and realizes that only "would have been" (and not "would be") works in the next clause. The final result is a conditional pattern in which the if-clause is in real past time and the next clause is in imagined, hypothetical past time.

My explanation may be a bit fanciful, but sometimes that's the only kind of explanation I can think of.

In the case of "If I were in your shoes" I can only say that the verb "be" is very often used this way, i.e., "if ... were" instead of the expected "if ... had been". Consider, though, that the simple past often substitutes for the past perfect in other contexts, so there shouldn't be anything too shocking about seeing the same substitution in a conditional sentence.

CJ

hypothetical sentences

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