'present unreal conditional' vs 'future unreal conditional'

[Lilish]

Dear all,

It's quite confusing to differentiate between present and future unreal conditonal when there is no adverb of time.How would you possibly know if the sentences below are reffering to an impossible situation in the present or in the future( of course in a test when the question is:Do the sentences below refer to present or future )?

If I won the lottery ,I would go on a cruise

If I owneda car , I would drive to work

Where would you live If you moved to the U.S.?

[Alan]

Hi Iilish,

I think you want to forget about the present and the past and the future when you are dealing with the so called condition 2 as in your sentences. They are all imaginary situations - hypothetical and unreal and they only exist in the speaker's mind. Conditional 1 or the possible condition is rooted in what is possibly going to happen and therefore exists in the present or near future. Conditional 3 or the impossible, is well after the event that never materialised and therfore clearly refers to the unfulfilled past.

Alan
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English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Saying It Twice

[Yankee]

Hi lilish

The second conditional frequently refers to an action that has not happened yet, so if you look at it that way, such sentences usually refer to a future activity and what would happen as a result of fulfilling that unreal or theoretical future activity. To me, your first and third sentences refer only to the future.

In your second sentence, the condition is a state rather than an activity, so this condition might be looked at as present and/or future (If I owned a car now/If I owned a car next week).
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Amy
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ESL teacher, and native speaker of American English