Wednesday, October 11, 2017

The difference between Present Subjunctive Conditional and Past Subjunctive Conditional?



I am trying to understand what is the lexical difference between next sentences:



If I went to London, I would see the Thames



and




If I had gone to London, I would have seen the Thames


Answer




If I went to London, I would see the Thames.




can mean two things:



1 it describes a repeated past activity.




2 it describes a non-past irrealis. The speaker is not actually going to London.



and




If I had gone to London, I would have seen the Thames.




This is a past irrealis. The person did not, in the past, actually go to London.



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