ABSTRACT
Conditional constructions are of prime importance in reasoning – both theoretical reasoning about what is true and practical reasoning about what to do. Since they can be used to express abstract conceptual ideas and hypothetical structures, conditionals reflect the human capacity to contemplate various situations and to infer consequences on the basis of known or imaginary conditions (Chou, 2000; Y.-Y. Wang, 2012). Conditional sentences are among the most useful structures in terms of expressing possibilities, guesses, wishes, regrets, and so on (i.e., the so-called subjunctive mood), as well as other abstract notions. They can be used by the speaker or writer to predict a situation that would result from different conditions from those which actually exist, existed in the past, or are likely to exist in the future (i.e., hypothetical expressions). Every language also has its own unique morpho-syntactic system for marking conditionals. Like other Indo-European languages, English has distinct linguistic structures used in conveying hypothetical or counterfactual messages expressed through the form of the verb in conditional sentences.
