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Prototypical conditional sentences in English are those of the form "If X, then Y". The clause X is referred to as the antecedent (or protasis), while the clause Y is called the consequent (or apodosis). A conditional is understood as expressing its consequent under the temporary hypothetical assumption of its antecedent.
A conditional sentence is a sentence in a natural language that expresses that one thing is contingent on another, e.g., "If it rains, the picnic will be cancelled." They are so called because the impact of the sentence’s main clause is conditional on a subordinate clause.
The English modal auxiliary verbs are a subset of the English auxiliary verbs used mostly to express modality, properties such as possibility and obligation. [a] They can most easily be distinguished from other verbs by their defectiveness (they do not have participles or plain forms [b]) and by their lack of the ending ‑(e)s for the third-person singular.
In elliptical sentences (see below), inversion takes place after so (meaning "also") as well as after the negative neither: so do I, neither does she. Inversion can also be used to form conditional clauses, beginning with should, were (subjunctive), or had, in the following ways: should I win the race (equivalent to if I win the race);
The conditional perfect is a grammatical construction that combines the conditional mood with perfect aspect.A typical example is the English would have written. [1] The conditional perfect is used to refer to a hypothetical, usually counterfactual, event or circumstance placed in the past, contingent on some other circumstance (again normally counterfactual, and also usually placed in the past).
The conditional simple and progressive may also be called the present conditional, while the perfect forms can be called past conditional. For details of the formation of conditional clauses and sentences in English, see English conditional sentences.
Causal conditional, if X then Y, where X is a cause of Y; Conditional probability, the probability of an event A given that another event B; Conditional proof, in logic: a proof that asserts a conditional, and proves that the antecedent leads to the consequent; Material conditional, in propositional calculus, or logical calculus in mathematics
The counterfactual conditional primed them to read the sentence corresponding to the presupposed facts very rapidly; no such priming effect occurred for indicative conditionals. [39] They spent different amounts of time 'updating' a story that contains a counterfactual conditional compared to one that contains factual information [ 40 ] and ...