if she does not like chrysanthemums, which may embody the memories of her marital life, she would not put them into the apron, which may mean she still find it worthwhile to live in this family
A sentence: if she does not like chrysanthemums, which may embody the memories of her marital life, she would not put them into the apron, which may mean she still finds it worthwhile to live in this family.
This is a sentence describing a story. Do you think it is acceptable? The question I have is, is it ambiguous?
1. It can mean we do not know whether she likes chrysanthemums, because WOULD means a hypothetical situation. According to pedantic rules DOES should be DID if it is a present hypothetical situation, but since many native speakers do not do so, the hypotheticality is still there.
2. It can be simple conditinal sentence, where DOES refers to an act we already know she has, ie liking the flowers, and WOULD is the past tense of WILL, referring to her possible past act of putting the flowers into the apron.
Top answer
Could the sentence be interpreted in these two ways?
— Johnson13
Could the sentence be interpreted in these two ways?
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