Famously, English conditional constructions licence the use of past tense verb forms to refer to present or future time and the use of past perfect structures where we would normally expect to see past simple ones. The occurrence of such verb forms in conditionals is here termed “conditional backshift” in line with scholars such as Dancygier (1998). Across linguistics, philosophy, psychology and related fields the standard view is that conditional backshift conveys that the proposition in the an…
Read moreFamously, English conditional constructions licence the use of past tense verb forms to refer to present or future time and the use of past perfect structures where we would normally expect to see past simple ones. The occurrence of such verb forms in conditionals is here termed “conditional backshift” in line with scholars such as Dancygier (1998). Across linguistics, philosophy, psychology and related fields the standard view is that conditional backshift conveys that the proposition in the antecedent of the conditional is unlikely to occur, is regarded with doubt by the speaker or is counterfactual. The aim of this paper is to overturn the standard view. To this end, two sets of data are presented. The first is a body of theoretical evidence from the language. The second consists of the results from a research survey administered to 1,300 respondents from a UK Russell Group university. The results provide overwhelming evidence that conditional backshift neither entails nor implicates improbability, negative epistemic stance or counterfactuality on the part of speakers.
