'if .... why ...?' structure

Question

in the 'If... why ...?' interogative structure, Is the content belong to 'if' the case, the fact, not tentative?

Grammarfreak · Accepted Answer

We need an example to avoid unneccesary waste of time.

Contraposition · Answer

I want to know how it goes in the sentence of that structure, generally, not in some particular cases of it.

KJinCali79 · Answer

I am not aware of an if...why structure. I'm sorry I do not understand what you are asking.

There is an if-then structure which is conditional or hypothetical.

Contraposition · Answer

like in
"If she is good at teaching, why students don't have a good relationship with her?'

Is 'her good at teaching' a fact or a tentative presumption?

Grammarfreak · Answer

That's the reason I asked for you to post an example instead of having people trying to help you assumed what your intended context was.

contrapositionIs 'her good at teaching' a fact or a tentative presumption?

I would not call it either. This sounds like an interrogative argument if there is such a term.
Example: If she is so rich, [ then] why was she shopping at a dollar store? Given this context, you already established your own suspicion and conclusion that she is in fact not as rich as she claims to be.

AlpheccaStars · Answer

There are sentences where the if-clause is factual. There is no set rule. You have to consider each sentence individually.

If you are going to spend four years getting a college education, why won't you spend a few days investigating the jobs available in your major field of study?

CalifJim · Answer

contrapositionIn the 'If... why ...?' interrogative structure, is does the content belong to 'if' ~~the case, the fact, not tentative~~? ???

One of these days someone is going to refuse to answer your questions anymore because you don't start your sentences with a capital letter.

Structures with if and why are not different from any other if statements. Like other if statements they can be tentative (hypothetical) or real. I can't imagine why you think there is something different about sentences like this with why.

If you are so smart, why don't you capitalize as necessary? (real)
If you were as attentive to detail as you should be, why wouldn't you observe the rules of capitalization? (hypothetical)
If you had been told about it 100 times, why wouldn't you have capitalized as required? (counterfactual)

CJ

Contraposition · Answer

The second theory is that a fortuitous genetic mutation triggered a change in human behaviour by subtly altering the way human brains were built. This made people fully capable of imagination, planning, or some other higher function for the first time, which in turn gave them the capacity to make better tools and devise better ways of making a living. For a while, it even looked as if two candidate mutations of the right age had appeared – in the gene called FOXP2, which is essential to speech and language in both people and songbirds. Adding these two mutations to mice does indeed seem to change the flexibility of wiring in their brain in a way that may be necessary for the rapid flicker of tongue and lung that is called speech, and perhaps coincidentally the mutations even change the way mice pups squeak without changing almost anything else about them. But recent evidence confirms that Neanderthals share the very same two mutations, which suggests that the common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern people, living about 400,000 years ago, may have already been using pretty sophisticated language. If language is the key to cultural evolution, and Neanderthals had language, then why did the Neanderthal toolkit show so little cultural change?
Moreover, genes would undoubtedly have changed during the human revolution after 200,000 years ago, but more in response to new habits than as causes of them. At an earlier date, cooking selected mutations for smaller guts and mouths, rather than vice versa. At a later date, milk drinking selected for muta - tions for retaining lactose digestion into adulthood in people of western European and East African descent.

Ridley, Matt - The Rational Optimist

CalifJim · Answer

contrapositionIf language is the key to cultural evolution, and Neanderthals had language, then why did the Neanderthal toolkit show so little cultural change?

This sentence does not fall into one of the three labelled conditional patterns, but the use of a "why" question within it has nothing to do with that. There are many sentences with if ... (then) ... that do not fall into the three main categories.

This sentence says:

Let's suppose that
1. Language is the key to cultural evolution (cultural change).
2. Neanderthals had language.
This means that the tools of the Neanderthals should have changed over time, but they didn't change much.
Why did this happen?

Maybe the mix of present and past tenses is bothering you.
1. is a general supposition which the speaker believes is universally true regardless of time, so it's in the present tense.
2. is a fact about the past, so it's in the past tense.

I hope this helps.
CJ

'if .... why ...?' structure

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