Teach english new edition r

Hypothetical meaning
When we talk about something that is not real, but that m ight be the case, we are talking 
hypothetically. English has many ways of expressing hypothetical meaning.
Modal verbs
As we saw on page 69, modals are auxiliary verbs which we use to com m ent on the likelihood 
of something. Thus, if we say‘It m ight rain’ we are saying that it is a hypothetical possibility. 
If we say‘Perhaps I could be persuaded’ o r ‘I would if I could’we are hypothesising situations
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Chapter 5
in which such eventualities are possible.
However, not all m odal verbs express hypothetical meaning. ‘It will rain’ is a statement 
of fact, and ‘I can’t go’ makes no concessions to the possibility of not going.
Conditional sentences
Conditional sentences are form ed when the conjunction ‘if’ is used to preface a condition, 
e.g. ‘If it rains (condition), you’ll get wet (result)’. In this case, it is quite likely that it will 
rain, and therefore the result is possible. However, if we change the sentence to ‘If it rained, 
you would get wet’ we are suggesting that the chance of it raining is unlikely - in other 
words, we are talking hypothetically - and this is signalled by the use of ‘would’ rather 
than ‘will’. A further change of verb tense/form (using the past perfect) will produce an 
impossible condition, e.g. ‘If it had rained, you would have got wet’. But it didn’t so you 
were spared!
These three conditional forms are often called first, second and third conditionals. It is 
useful to understand whether they are real (= possible/likely) or hypothetical (= unlikely/ 
impossible) and whether they refer to the present, future or past. The following table gives 
some examples of this.
real
hypothetical
talking about the