past perfect in a conditional?
English translation: Yes, it can
| 06:39 Jul 10, 2012 |
| English language (monolingual) [PRO] Art/Literary - Linguistics / grammar | |||||||
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|  Selected response from: Charles Davis Spain Local time: 19:39 | ||||||
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| SUMMARY OF ALL EXPLANATIONS PROVIDED | ||||
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| 4 +2 | Yes, it can |
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| 4 +1 | pluperfect |
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| 4 | Re unreal conditions |
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| Discussion entries: 2 | |
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Answers
17 mins confidence: 
peer agreement (net): +1
peer agreement (net): +1pluperfect Explanation: What you have here is in fact a 'pluperfect': 'I had done' And yes, you can have one of these in an expression with 'if', as long as it follows on from what precedes it. In other words, in your example, the interposed 'if' clause needs to relate yo what comes before; you need to be able to remove the subordinate 'if' clause and it still makes sense. For example: "Where the customer has failed to make the payment within the agreed time (if the parties had previously/originally/already agreed on payment of a price for services rendered), the mandate relationship has terminated and the mandated task has not been completed, ..." -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 2 hrs (2012-07-10 08:53:13 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- 'pluperfect' is the term I learnt at school when studying English, French German, and Latin. We were not at that time taught the alternative term 'past perfect'. |
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1 hr confidence: peer agreement (net): +2
peer agreement (net): +2Yes, it can Explanation: What Tony says is sound, I think, but it doesn't seem to answer your question. What you ask is not whether this tense can be used in an if-clause, but whether it is inevitably interpreted as expressing an unreal condition, as it does in an example such as: "If the parties had agreed on payment, the price would be payable". In this example, of course, "had agreed" is subjunctive; it implies that the parties had not agreed on payment. But in the example you have quoted, it is not subjunctive; it is an ordinary indicative past perfect tense and is not understood to express an unreal condition. It simply means that it may or may not be true that the parties had agreed on payment, and whether the price is or is not payable depends on this. First, on the name of this tense: "past perfect" is a standard term in English grammar nowadays for what was referred to as "pluperfect" when I was at school, and corresponds in meaning to the pluperfect tense in other languages such as Latin. It's the same thing. Reduced to essentials, your sentence is "If the parties had agreed on payment of a price for services rendered [...], the price is payable". It makes good sense and the if-clause is not interpreted as an unreal condition. The sense of the verb "had agreed" is understood to be indicative, not subjunctive. It expresses something that may or may not have occurred prior to some past event or action, namely the termination of the agreement. A simple past could also be used here -- "If the parties agreed on a price [before the agreement was terminated], the price is payable" -- but the past perfect is also correct and is suitable if you want to emphasise the idea that the price agreement was made prior to the termination of the agreement. The test, in my opinion, is simply how the if-clause relates to the main clause. Here, the main clause is indicative, "is payable", not conditional, "would be payable". -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 3 hrs (2012-07-10 10:32:06 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- Let me try to clarify the points raised by B D Finch. First, I say that "had agreed" is subjunctive in the sentence "If the parties had agreed on payment, the price would be payable". She says that it is not subjunctive, and that the subjunctive would be "Had the parties agreed". I cannot see how there can be any difference between these two in the mood and tense of the verb. It is subjunctive in both cases. Grammarians of English are generally agreed that one use of the subjunctive in English is to express hypothetical meaning. Its use is most clearly seen with the verb "to be", because the subjunctive has a different form in certain persons: "were" instead of indicative "was". "Were I in your place" is subjunctive; so is "If I were in your place". Similarly, "Had they agreed" and "If they had agreed" (where the latter is counterfactual) are both subjunctive. Second, she says that the present tense cannot be used after "had agreed". I disagree, and indeed the source text we are considering is a counterexample. It cannot be used after a counterfactual condition, but the whole point is that "had agreed" here does not express a counterfactual condition; it expresses what used to be called an "open" condition. Can you say "If you had heated water to 100°C, it boils"? Just like that, not really; but you can devise a perfectly grammatical sentence in which a present tense could be used after "had heated": "If you had heated the water to 100ºC before you went shopping, it is now boiling." I freely admit that you would more often say "If you heated the water" rather than "If you had heated the water", but the latter is in no sense incorrect. It is true, I think, that one reason why you would often tend not to use the past perfect (indicative) in an if-clause is that it has the same form as the past perfect subjunctive and therefore might lead the listener to assume initially that a counterfactual condition is being expressed, resulting in confusion. But it is perfectly grammatical. |
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