In this short lecture we'll be discussing past unreal conditionals. Past unreal
conditionals are the
last type of conditional sentence. They describe past conditions and results
that did not happen. Both the condition and results are impossible, not true, or
imaginary. In other words, when we write past unreal conditional sentences,
we're talking about things that never actually happened.
Let's take a look at several examples of past unreal conditional sentences. "If she
had studied for the test, she would have passed." So in this past unreal conditional
sentence, we have the if-clause, "If she had studied for the test." That's the condition
which is untrue. It's not real, and we have, "she would have passed." So, this is
an untrue or unreal result. So, if we try to rewrite the sentence to give us the same
meaning, we can see that she did not study for the test, and she did not pass.
The second example, "He would not have gotten sick if he had not eaten the expired
food." So again the past unreal conditional is talking about things
that actually did not happen, so we think about "He would not have gone sick"
What actually happened in reality is that he did get sick.
And, if we think about "if he had not eaten the expired food." In reality he ate the
expired food. So we have the sentences "He got sick." and "He ate the expired food." Let's look at the
last example. "If she had won the lottery, she would have bought a new house." Again
remember that the condition and the result, this whole sentence, never
happened, so we can say that she didn't win the lottery, and she did not buy a
new house. To form the past unreal conditional, we use a past perfect verb in
the if-clause, and we use would have + a past participle verb in the independent
clause. So we can follow this formula. Let's look at an example. "If they had
studied every day, their grades would have improved." So in the if-clause we used a
past perfect verb and in the independent clause, we use would have + past
participle form of the verb. A second example, we have the independent clause first and the
if-clause at the end of a sentence, but the rules is still the same.
"He would have bought a new car if he had gotten a raise." We use "would have" plus the
past participle form of the verb, "bought" and then in the if-clause we use the
past perfect, "had gotten". When we write past unreal conditionals we can also
use other modals in the independent clause. For example, "If she had saved more
money, she could have traveled to Asia." So in this case were using again in the
if-clause past perfect and in the independent clause instead of using would we used
"could have traveled". "If she had passed her driving test, she might have worked
for Uber." So, again in the if-clause we use past perfect and in the independent
clause we used "might have worked", so in this case we've replaced "would" with "might", and
again this whole sentence is talking about something that never happened, so
in this first part, "she had passed her driving test" so in reality she did not pass her
test and "she might have worked for Uber" so right now in reality she doesn't work for Uber. "He could
have gone to Europe if he had chosen not to work this summer." So again we can use
"could" "could have gone to Europe if he had chosen not
to work this summer. So if we think about this, he did not go to Europe
and he worked during the summer.