Owning your own home

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fizzy.bleach in reply to @Oliver Schick

(strictly speaking, the indicative in the subordinate clause doesn't have a tense--it hasn't happened, isn't happening, and may not happen, but the indicative is required because 'if' already carries the conditional sense, so adding a conditional form would be nonsense)

not sure i understand this. so an utterance like:

"if you would just let me finish, ..."

is nonsense?

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Brommers in reply to @fizzy.bleach

It's not nonsense but it's not a complete sentence, hence the ellipsis.

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fizzy.bleach in reply to @Brommers

i'm asking more about the verb form in that clause. oliver seems to say that a conditional there would produce nonsense (whereas a non-conditional like "if you let me finish" is not nonsense)

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