Conditional

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Anonymous

#570529 Fri, 26 Sep 08 06:53 AM

Hi,

In the thread named "Usage of can/could" which was started by "phanish", I found these what looked like conditionals in Mr. M's revisionary work. I would like to know if these are zero, first or any other conditional. I think a zero condtional in one that always gives the same result (eg, physical law?) and the first conditional is one that denotes what one will do given a present if-clause. This understanding of mine seems to fall short when it comes to fully understanding some of the sentences below.

Picked out from your revisionary work:

If we keep aside a part of our income every month, say about Rs 100, then we can save Rs 1200 every year
If we can do this successfully for one year, we can then extend it for another year.

How about this?
If the person chooses corrrectly, it is the other person's turn to pick a card.

Anonymous

Clauses, Conditionals

CalifJim

#570767 Fri, 26 Sep 08 09:22 PM

Anonymous
I think a zero condtional in [is] one that always gives the same result (eg, physical law?) and the first conditional is one that denotes what one will do given a present if-clause.

This is a reasonable thought. But I don't think I would restrict the first conditional to cases where will is used. Other modal verbs like can, may, and should are frequently used there, as well as imperatives.