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| I believe I have hit upon why past tense often is associated with counter-factuality in conditional sentences. My reasoning is as follows ...
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| I was thinking to express my idea in two parts. First going over the ways particles/affixes change their meaning over time. Then to do a thought experiments. A thought experiment that shows for a language with two tenses it is very likely that the past tense in a protasis (“if”-clause) assumes strong connotations of counterfactuality. In fact the interesting question is why it hasn’t happen in all languages.
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| ======= Part 1 ========
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| If a word keeps turning up in the same environments(situations) then it will come to connote these situations. Let me give three examples of this …
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| A) How “since” obtained a subsiduary meaning
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| 1) I haven’t eaten since breakfast.
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| 2) The local football team hasn’t been doing so good since Peter McCallum broke his leg.
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| 3) Since you’re so clever, you work it out yourself.
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| A word takes its meaning from the environment it is usually/commonly found in (well that is normally how we learn the meaning of a word). And meanings can change if a word is used in a fulcrum**** situation or fulcrum suit (a set of fulcrum situations …my terms). “Since” was originally all about time. “Since” denoted a time span from an event in the past up until the present time (1). Then it was used in sentences such as (2). If a child learning English heard (2) (and similar fulcrums) they would perfectly reasonably give “since” the meaning “because”. And hence they might come out with utterances such as (3) some time later.
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| If “a time span from an event in the past up until the present time” meaning was far more common than the “because” meaning. I would say “since” DENOTED “a time span from an event in the past up until the present time” and CONNOTED “because”. (“denoted” and “connoted” are partial cognates). However probably not appropriate here as the two usuages of “since” are about equally common.
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| When a grammatical word (particle) changes its meaning, often the original meaning is lost. Or alternately the two different usages can quite happily live on in parallel indefinitely. Presumably in the latter case, the ambiguity does not cause that much confusion.
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| More can be said about particles/affixes changing their meaning, but I think the above encapsulates the basics.
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| ==========
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| Thought Experiment (TE)
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| Imagine a pre-industrial society. The fastest way of getting about is walking : the fastest way of sharing information is by word of mouth.
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| (The above important for my argument : the below is just adding colour)
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| Lets make this society an isolated village … comprising of about 200 adults. It is a hot climate so people spend a lot of their life out of doors.
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| Lets imagine these people as 200 dots on a piece of paper. You can see these dots mingling/moving during the day but at night this motion vitually ceases.
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| ===========================
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| These people have a language. Remarkably like English in fact. That language has a past tense (PST), non past tense (NPST) distinction. PST is represented by the affix “-d”, NPST is unmarked.
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| No perfective/imperfective distinction or perfect. Lets keep it simple.
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| Assume here that “-d” has only past tense meaning in all environments … maybe only grammaticized a few days ago (I know, unlikely, but please bear with me).
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| There is no future tense … well they have a word meaning “intend” but it hasn’t been grammaticized yet.
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| ===========================
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| Old Umara is quite sickly. She loves blood-pudding. Her grandson Puntu is to undergo the initiation into manhood rite quite soon. Only adults from Puntu’s family and the village shaman Lekau may attend. The rite is held in Lekau’s hut. To try and encourage Umara out of her sick bed, Umara dangles the prospect of blood-pudding. The word on the street is …
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| (1) “If Umara attends* Puntu’s event, they intend to serve blood-pudding.”
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| (1) is valid right up to the time of the event.
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| After the event (2) is valid
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| We are only considering the “if” clause here (sometimes called the antecedent or protasis) so (2) “If Umara attended Puntu’s event …”
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| Now after the rite (the event) news of it will spread … people meeting and chatting like they do.
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| Now lets go back to our piece of paper with these dots. Imagine if you will a cone under the piece of paper. The point of the cone meets the piece of paper at one point. In fact this point on the paper is the position of Lekau’s hut. Sheet of paper is 2-D, cone is 3-D, so we have introduced another dimension. This is the dimension of time. The point where the sheet meets the cone is the place and time of the event (the rite). The cone can be thought of as a “cone of knowledge about the event” (of course I use cone as an idealized shape, the actual shape of the “knowledge volume” will be quite irregular as it depend upon people going about their usual business and chatting together).
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| Anyway … the point I am trying to make is that in a short period of time, everyone in the village will know of the event, they will know if Umara in fact managed to go to the rite. If she in fact attended the rite (2) is absolete. You would only hear (2) in the event that Umara was too sick to attend the event. (This is a strong tendency rather than an absolute rule. You would hear (2) outside the cone. Also you could hear (2) if a speaker and a hearer were inside the cone but somehow lack the knowledge (perhaps they just woke up).
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| Lets run through the above scenario 100 times. 50 times Umara managed to attend** and 50 times she failed. Imagine we overhear all conversations in these 100 run throughs. Perhaps 90% of the time you hear (2) it would refer to a CF (with the remaining 10% of times (2) being due to lack of knowledge).
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| It is inevitable in this community that a clause containing “if” + “-d” quickly gets associated with counter factuality.
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| Hence the form that is called the second conditional in the web page below.
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_conditional_sentences
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| 1) Note that under SECOND CONDITIONAL it says “used to describe hypothetical, typically counterfactual situations”. I would say that quote is consistent with my theory : it is consistent with the 90/10 split I mentioned above.
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| 2) There are situations called FLV (future less vivid). For example … ==> If he took the syrup, he would get better <==
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| Now the future can never be said to be counterfactual (in general … I suppose you could construct an elaborate counter example to my statement). But the above example suggests that there is extreme doubt that “he” will take the syrup. Maybe 90% chance he will not take it, 10% chance he will take it.
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| [ I consider (1) and (2) as proof that I am right ]
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| Now in TE language, “if” + “-d” is nearly completely associated with counterfacuality. Hence the PST/NPST distinction has been lost. This distinction might be missed. Maybe there will be a future developement in the language to re-instate this distinction.
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| [I am of course thinking of English using “if” + “pluperfect” to indicate “counterfactual past” … I am not so sure how to explain of this developement. If our TE language had a past perfect would the third conditional be formed at the same time as the second conditional or would it be a subsequent developement (knock on effect ??) ]
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| *Notice that in this TE language as in English. “if” plus a verb in indicative mood produce a verb with future*** meaning. This isn’t surprising as the main point of these contingency sentences is to make plans. Plans for the future.
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| **During these 50 run-throughs (2) would be excedingly rare … it would be obsolete … people with knowledge of the actual situation have no need to talk about contingencies … to use conditionals.
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| ***Just to complicate things a little. We can say that there are two types of verb. Telic verbs and Stative verbs. Telic verbs are verbs where an outside observer would see something happening. “drink” is such a verb. Stative verbs are verbs where an outside observer would not see anything happening. “believe” is such a verb. “if” plus a telic verb in indicative mood produce a verb with future meaning. “if” plus a stative verb in indicative mood produce a verb with future meaning, however this future meaning stretches down to the present (time of speaking). It is this tense that is the most pertinant hence it is said … “if” plus a stative verb in indicative mood produce a verb with present tense meaning.
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| ****The analogy is that in a lever or seesaw the fulcrum doesn’t move, but it is essential for the range of positions that the end of the lever/seesaw can take. I am comparing the change of meaning of the particle to the change in position of the lever-end or seesaw extremity. Now the linguistic term pivot is already firmly established. Was it Dixon who coined this term ? I believe “pivot” and “fulcrum” are different words for the same thing (synonyms). However I have never really got the analogy that presumably being denoted by the word “pivot”. Can anybody enlighten me ?
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| ==========================
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