Difference in meaning?

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 8:14 am

What, if any, difference would you say there is in meaning among/between these:

If the wind blew then the house fell down.

If the wind blew yesterday then the house will fall down tomorrow.

If the wind is blowing then the house will soon fall down.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 8:25 am

It seems that only the first sentence is absolutely true (it describes what usually happened to a house in the past. Who knows if the house is still standing, rebuilt and stronger now!?). The second sentence is absurd (if a house is a ramshackle enough and a wind strong enough, the house will fall down immediately, and if it doesn't, who can say when the house will actually fall?). The only thing we can do is make moment by moment predictions, based only on immediate "structural" i.e. "house-y" evidence (house leaning, walls cracking, groaning sounds, shuddering): 'It looks/sounds like the house is going to collapse! Everybody outside/Stand clear!'. The immediacy of the wind in the third sentence in no way changes this inability of the speaker to predict what will happen to the house in the absence of the above kind of "structural" evidence that collapse is imminent.

Not that any of this prevents speakers from making sometimes wild predictions (but then, they probably more use just "simple" modality, rather than possibly confusing and, at a subconscious level at least, if not a conscious level, false-thus-very-unlikely/unattested/unattestable "complex" conditional, "cause" and "effect" chains; that is, what we say is true to deep linguistic processes, and is usually a fair reflection of the world and how it works, because the linguistic processes were shaped by that world and its social pressures to "make sense").

'Owzat?

Great puzzle there, metal, thanks for posting it! Even if I have got it wrong (and in an earlier edit(ion) of this post, I hared off without thinking enough and wrote a load of old rubbish i.e. not quite correct regarding the "difference" between the second and third examples

), it was fun thinking about it, and if I have in my "final" analysis here got it wrong, it will be just as much fun to read somebody else's correction!

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 9:25 am

Expanding on the hamster's brief (edit: well it was brief when I read it) comment, it must depend on what you (don't) know :

My very first interpretation of the first was that it was meant as a so-called zero conditional put in the past. You could easily put "When" or "Whenever" or "If ever". You could use "used to" at least once. I'm not sure how often "would" is really used for past habit outside FCE exams but it would make sense here.

To say "If the wind blows then the house falls down", the present of the above, is to have established, or at least supposed, some kind of pattern (if=when=whenever) whereas the two other examples are based on ignorance: the speaker doesn't know if the wind blew yesterday or is blowing now.

Although I suppose the first could be in the same "don't know" category, unless it's absolutely de rigeur to use "3rd conditional" to speculate about the past?

*(I don't know if the wind blew yesterday nor if the house fell down) If the wind blew then the house fell down". *

Many people might prefer a full blown 3rd conditional or at least "would've fallen" here.

But really there are more unknowns. Is the speaker standing in front of the remains of a house? :

"(I don't know if the wind blew yesterday) If it did then the house (which I am standing in front of) fell down (as a result).

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 2:09 pm

JTT wrote:Expanding on the hamster's brief (edit: well it was brief when I read it) comment...

Sorry about that, nobody was online at the time I snuck back to began immediately rewriting my initially silly take on things; I thought nobody had read what I'd written/would notice any changes!

Hmm, to expand slightly on things myself, about those "wild predictions" I mentioned (and totally forget about past stories), speakers might look at a house or a wind (or both) NOW and say things such as:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(A house will blow down [fall down?] in a strong wind)
This house will blow down in a strong wind
This house would blow down in a strong wind
(*This house would blow down in this strong wind)
This house will blow down in this strong wind
??A house will blow down in this strong wind
?A house would blow down in this strong wind

(A strong wind will blow down a house)
This strong wind will blow down a house
This strong wind would blow down a house
(*This strong wind would blown down this house)
This strong wind will blow down this house
A strong wind will blow down this house
A strong wind would blow down this house

(You may notice that I have changed only a word at a time in each successive sentence).

* These sentences can apply to a past but not NOW.
===============================================

All of the above have a certain "jokey" element about them; and even in a hurricane, the kind of conditional sentences that metal is "testing" us with just don't seem to me to "naturally" apply. As I've said already, we can look at houses and at winds and say what we like about either as a subject, but there is no condition (requirement) that there has to be a likely relationship between strong wind and a collapse (as in metal's second and third sentences) until actual signs of collapse begin to show (or, obviously, until actual collapse occurs, in which case we can state a definite [causal] relationship).

So, all are of a very general (non-truthful, "exaggerative") nature. But the really exaggerating sentences are actually metal's second and third, because there seems to be absolutely no evidence for, and thus no obvious reasons for making, the predictions.

Hopefully not just waffle here.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 2:56 pm

JuanTwoThree wrote:To say "If the wind blows then the house falls down", the present of the above...

That seems a bit of a silly sentence, and it wasn't among metal's anyhow.

"(I don't know if the wind blew yesterday) If it did then the house (which I am standing in front of) fell down (as a result).

I didn't quite get the middle part of your post, JTT, but I found that very end part of it interesting in relation (in my mind) to metal's first sentence (not sure what you were actually on about or meant by it, though!

); I didn't think of an "ignorance" interpretation, of making a tentative interpretation provided (only if) 'the wind blew' (then it destroyed the house), but there is a problem with this reading, namely that even if it was very windy last night, there is still no evidence that it really was the wind that did the damage. Why not a gas leak, bomb, subsidence, nasty neighbours drafting a sneak and swift demolition job by a wrecking crew, age and/or just plain shoddy construction etc etc?!

So, again, to use a conditional would be strange (vs. saying 'If it was windy, it was probably the wind (that did it)', which obviously sounds better just as 'It was probably the wind (that did it)'; I mean, we can SEE the end result/"effect", can speculate as to the cause but do not "need" to state an obvious yet "uncertain" and pragmatically very strange cause-effect "condition"), unless it is indeed a sentence in a story with an if=when(ever) meaning. (I guess the storyteller there had to rebuild quite often).

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 4:23 pm

(A house will blow down [fall down?] in a strong wind)
This house will blow down in a strong wind
This house would blow down in a strong wind
(*This house would blow down in this strong wind)
This house will blow down in this strong wind
??A house will blow down in this strong wind
?A house would blow down in this strong wind

(A strong wind will blow down a house)
This strong wind will blow down a house
This strong wind would blow down a house
(*This strong wind would blown down this house)
This strong wind will blow down this house
A strong wind will blow down this house
A strong wind would blow down this house

What is this, an ode to baked beans?

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 5:29 pm

To interpret "conditional sentences" you need to analyse each clause separately.

The so called zero, first, second and third conditionals are simply common conjunctions of certain main and subordinate clause types.

I would interpret one as making a general statement about the past. You could change 'if' to 'when' or'whenever' and there would only be a slight change of empasis.

In the second case again we have a real possibility in the past and a consequence in the future. The example is not very good, and a better one might be
If the river flooded his house yesterday, he'll be furious when he gets home tomorrow.
but the grammatical principle would be the same.

The third is almost the same as the second, except the real possibility is now in the present.

Like Larry in "FLOODED" you are being rather too transparent. As the Spanish say
"Se les ve el plumero"
but you are quite right to undermine the ridiculous concept of the three plus zero conditionals. In an article in the "Guardian" a year ago, one of the chief CELTA trainers for IH London claimed it was much better to teach the forms of the conditional then leave his students with no concept of the grammar. Frankly I disagree; better ignorant than misinformed.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 6:57 pm

Andrew Patterson wrote:What is this, an ode to baked beans?

It's actually an entry into the ESL Cafe's Poetry competition. I feel it's better than CONTEXTMAN's recent effort (do a search for "doggerel" to see where his is at

) - what do you think? Heh only joking, I was just trying to be thorough in getting rid of all my rid all my pent-up "hot air".

I don't want to contradict anything you've said, Stephen, but can "grammatical principles" really help us in making sense of sentences that are "not very good"? By that, I simply mean that your alternative second sentence doesn't need to make "grammatical" sense so much because it already makes perfect semantic, pragmatic, "common" and whatever other types of other sense there might be in addition to its undoubted grammatical sense too (and I rather suspect its grammatically making sense is a consequence of the other "kinds of meaning" making sense rather than the other way around!).

That is, we can easily imagine that a guy certainly would be furious if a flood we do actually seem to be saying has indeed occured has also spread far enough to encroach upon and flood his house (it is a fact of the nature of rising water and of unprotected houses that floods that reach such houses will indeed do damage). What is harder to imagine is that a wind that we don't seem to know even existed, and certainly have no idea about strength-wise will (have had) the power to knock down a house that we have no reason to presume wasn't strong enough structurally to withstand the potentially non-existant wind!!!

How then can metal's example "stand up" to the "force", meaning-wise (or "grammatically", if you prefer

) of your "better" alternative, Stephen? I'm confused

...but then I'm always confused, due mostly to the "power" of my own wierd and wonderful thought-processes to confuse myself!

P.S. SJ, you said, 'In the second case again we have a real possibility in the past...'. Can I also just ask, what exactly is a "real possibility"? Do you just mean like in the phrase, 'There a real possibility/strong chance that...'?

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 7:48 pm

fluffyhamster wrote:
JuanTwoThree wrote:To say "If the wind blows then the house falls down", the present of the above...

That seems a bit of a silly sentence, and it wasn't among metal's anyhow.

Unless it is a prediction or a statement about the future.

If he looks at me once more, he dies.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 7:49 pm

Stephen Jones wrote:To interpret "conditional sentences" you need to analyse each clause separately.

The so called zero, first, second and third conditionals are simply common conjunctions of certain main and subordinate clause types.

A man after my own heart.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 7:51 pm

Stephen Jones wrote:. In an article in the "Guardian" a year ago, one of the chief CELTA trainers for IH London claimed it was much better to teach the forms of the conditional then leave his students with no concept of the grammar. Frankly I disagree; better ignorant than misinformed.

Let me at him!

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 7:59 pm

How about this slight modification?

Out in Shropshire, England, somewhere's:

L: (College boy farm-hand) He got hit by a such a storm last night.

R: (A yokel) If't storm blew up so fierce yesterday, then house'll be down by tomorrow. You mark my words, lad.

(if't = if the)

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 8:01 pm

metal56 wrote:
fluffyhamster wrote:
JuanTwoThree wrote:To say "If the wind blows then the house falls down", the present of the above...

That seems a bit of a silly sentence, and it wasn't among metal's anyhow.

Unless it is a prediction or a statement about the future.

If he looks at me once more, he dies.

Are we talking about a house of cards here, unable to stand up to the faintest fart of a breeze? LOL!

As for the second example, I'm imagining a tatooed thickset thug every bit as tough as he looks, and more than capable of ripping your head off, metal (that is, acting upon his very real threat)! LOL again!

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 8:45 pm

Unable to, capable of: looks ~ ...

Couple that to the "signs" I was going on about in my earlier post, and Stephen's somehow "better" example, and I think you guys are missing something (or things, perhaps) vital in making (=feeling it is appropriate to make) "strong" predictions. But as I keep saying, I may be wrong, and you are welcome to disagree or set me straight.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 10:37 pm

quote]

Are we talking about a house of cards here, unable to stand up to the faintest fart of a breeze? LOL!

[/quote]

I never really saw you as a Mayfair or Belgravia type. You should come and check out the house that, Iban, our resident "druggie" lives in. Bring a couple of shoe boxes and a few old newspapers if you come to stay.