thetazuo
Senior Member
China
Chinese - China
- Oct 16, 2018
- #1
The storms would have scattered and delayed the Volantenes, even as they had his own ships.
If fortune smiled, many of their warships might have sunk or run aground.But not all. No god was that good, and those green galleys that survived by now could well have sailed around Valyria.
Source: A Dance with Dragons
Hi. Does the underlined sentence work in the same way as this example?
If the Sand Snakes were imprisoned in the Spear Tower, they surely would have heard her shouting.
they surely would have heard her
Namely, it is a detective conditional/open conditional, which should be paraphrased as follows:
If fortune smiled, many of their warships might have sunken or run aground (but not many of their warships sank or ran aground, so fortune didn’t smile), or (many of their warships sank or ran aground, so fortune may have smiled).
Or alternatively,
If fortune smiled, many of their warships might have sunk or run aground
=If fortune smiled, many of their warships would perhaps have sunk or run aground
—> If fortune smiles, many of their warships will perhaps have sunk or run aground (the speaker’s thought in present tense)
Make sense?
Thank you.
B
boozer
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Bulgarian
- Oct 16, 2018
- #2
thetazuo said:
Or alternatively,
If fortune smiled, many of their warships might have sunk or run aground
=If fortune smiled, many of their warships would perhaps have sunk or run aground
—> If fortune smiles, many of their warships will perhaps have sunk or run aground (the speaker’s thought in present tense)
Yes.
thetazuo
Senior Member
China
Chinese - China
- Oct 16, 2018
- #3
boozer said:
Thank you, boozer.
Then what do you think about this part? Does it make sense to think of the example as a detective conditional?
thetazuo said:
Namely, it is a detective conditional/open conditional, which should be paraphrased as follows:
If fortune smiled, many of their warships might have sunken or run aground (but not many of their warships sank or ran aground, so fortune didn’t smile), or (many of their warships sank or ran aground, so fortune may have smiled).
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boozer
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Bulgarian
- Oct 16, 2018
- #4
I think not, Tazuo. As the creator of that whole world, the omnipresent, omniscient author knows everything, so he will not be guessing about what happened in the past. He may simply not want to tell us, at times.
And then, any of his characters can be guessing at what happened in the past, but I do not think this is the case here. His character thinks in the present tense:
If fortune smiles, those ships may have sunk already.
and then, the author tells us about it in the past tense
If fortune smiled, those ships might have sunk
In other words, the meaning is
We will be fortunate if those ships have sunk or run aground. But we cannot imagine all of them have, because that would be too good to be true.
thetazuo
Senior Member
China
Chinese - China
- Oct 16, 2018
- #5
Thank you, boozer. Nonetheless, the condition “If fortune smiled” is still an open one, even if the whole sentence is not a detective conditional, right?
se16teddy
Senior Member
London but from Yorkshire
English - England
- Oct 16, 2018
- #6
boozer said:
As the creator of that whole world, the omnipresent, omniscient author knows everything, so he will not be guessing about what happened in the past.
I understood the whole quote of #1 as "free indirect speech", and so not the thoughts of the author, but the thoughts of a character in the story. We would need more context to know. Or maybe it will remain ambiguous even if we have all the context in the world!
In any case, this is an excellent example of what I call a proper "mixed conditional" - that is, a confusing muddle. "Have" in "might have" makes it look like it is a closed or type 3 conditional, implying that the speaker knows that not many of their warships ran aground (or none did). But in this case "if fortune smiled" means "I don't know if fortune smiles or not", so it is a philosophical question about whether good fortune exists in general, and the logical connection between that and the fate of the fleet is very problematic.
As so often with poor Thetazuo's texts, they raise many questions, but asking and trying to answer these questions promises no reward in terms of greater wisdom, greater understanding of good (or even plain bad) English, or anything else.
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boozer
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Bulgarian
- Oct 16, 2018
- #7
se16teddy said:
I understood the whole quote of #1 as "free indirect speech", and so not the thoughts of the author, but the thoughts of a character in the story.
Yes, that is what I said in the next sentence of my post
thetazuo
Senior Member
China
Chinese - China
- Oct 17, 2018
- #8
Thank you. So the “might have” in the op just indicates past possibility, like this example?
What was that noise? ~ It
a cat.
se16teddy
Senior Member
London but from Yorkshire
English - England
- Oct 17, 2018
- #9
thetazuo said:
Thank you. So the “might have” in the op just indicates past possibility, like this example?
might have been
What was that noise? ~ Ita cat.
Grammatically, yes, I it might be a type 1 conditional, but I instinctively ignored it because it makes no logical sense. It makes sense to draw a conclusion about a possible past from possible evidence
If there are cigarette ends lying around then Fred might have been here.
But “if fortune smiles” is not evidence - is it?
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