even if there was.... tense question

Post by a***@gmail.com
1) Even if there is a one percent chance that someone's life is in danger,
we should take action.
2) Even if there was a one percent chance that someone's life was in danger,
we should take action.
Are these both grammatical?
Are they idiomatic?
I suppose '1' is fine, but I can't make up my mind about '2'. It doesn't sound
quite right to my non-native ears, but I don't know how else one would do it.
Gratefully,
Navi

They are both fine. And you have:

3) Even if there was a one percent chance that someone's life were in danger,
we should take action.

4) Even if there was a one percent chance that someone's life were to be
in danger, we should take action.

Paul Carmichael

2018-10-21 08:44:14 UTC

Post by h***@gmail.com
3) Even if there was a one percent chance that someone's life were in danger,
we should take action.

If there were.

--
Paul.

https://paulc.es/
https://asetrad.org

h***@gmail.com

2018-10-21 11:32:24 UTC

Post by h***@gmail.com
3) Even if there was a one percent chance that someone's life were in danger,
we should take action.

If there were.

Thank you. The subjunctive I believe.

h***@gmail.com

2018-10-21 11:39:39 UTC

Post by h***@gmail.com
3) Even if there was a one percent chance that someone's life were in danger,
we should take action.

If there were.

I thought you were correcting my typo - good.
I thought you was correcting my typo - Estuary.

But in my sentence the "was" is Good English: "was" and "were" can be
mixed and matched.

Paul Carmichael

2018-10-21 11:56:48 UTC

Post by h***@gmail.com

Post by h***@gmail.com
3) Even if there was a one percent chance that someone's life were in danger,
we should take action.

If there were.

I thought you were correcting my typo - good.
I thought you was correcting my typo - Estuary.
But in my sentence the "was" is Good English: "was" and "were" can be
mixed and matched.

If it were in the past, yes. But the present "should" suggests otherwise. If it were
"should have", then fine.

--
Paul.

https://paulc.es/
https://asetrad.org

b***@gmail.com

2018-10-21 18:24:49 UTC

Post by h***@gmail.com

Post by h***@gmail.com
3) Even if there was a one percent chance that someone's life were in danger,
we should take action.

If there were.

I thought you were correcting my typo - good.
I thought you was correcting my typo - Estuary.
But in my sentence the "was" is Good English: "was" and "were" can be
mixed and matched.

No. But in my sentence the "was" was is Good English: "was" and "were" can be
mixed and matched. No?

Peter T. Daniels

2018-10-21 14:28:34 UTC

Post by h***@gmail.com
3) Even if there was a one percent chance that someone's life were in danger,
we should take action.

If there were.

How American! An American, who would use that subjunctive, has to assume
he actually meant the past when he used the past tense, hence my change
as posted just above.

Madrigal Gurneyhalt

2018-10-21 12:32:01 UTC

It's all sub-par to me.

Even *when* there is *only* a one percent chance that someone's
life is in danger, we *must* *act*.

Jerry Friedman

2018-10-21 13:18:44 UTC

"If there was" can have two meanings. First, it can indicate
uncertainty about something in the past. In that case, the sentence is
okay if it means we should take action now, maybe to change our way of
doing something so that people's lives aren't in danger as they were in
the past.

Second, it can indicate a counterfactual hypothesis about the present.
This is common but deprecated by some in favor of "if there were" (maybe
less so in Britain than in other countries). This meaning doesn't go
very well with "someone's life /was/ in danger" in the past, but maybe
you can come up with some kind of context where we calculate now what
the chance was that someone was in danger in the past, maybe.

Neither meaning corresponds to 1), in which the action happens at the
same time as the danger. That would be

"Even if there was a one percent chance that someone's life was in
danger, we should have taken action." (We don't know the chance, though
maybe someone has suggested that it was 1%.)

"Even if there had been a one percent chance that someone's life was in
danger, we should have taken action." (We know the chance wasn't
1%--presumably it was greater.)

--
Jerry Friedman

Peter T. Daniels

2018-10-21 14:27:22 UTC

(2) needs to change to "should have taken action."

Jerry Friedman

2018-10-21 17:50:37 UTC

By the way, "a one percent chance that someone's life was in danger"
isn't much risk. There was a 100% chance that my life was in danger as
I drove to my local birding spot this morning, and the same was true of
everyone else on the road. Nobody took action.

--
Jerry Friedman

Peter T. Daniels

2018-10-21 18:26:15 UTC

Post by Jerry Friedman
By the way, "a one percent chance that someone's life was in danger"
isn't much risk. There was a 100% chance that my life was in danger as
I drove to my local birding spot this morning, and the same was true of
everyone else on the road. Nobody took action.

I think you have to say "100% certainty." Cf. "0% possibility"? Not sure
either of those applies to a drive.

On Friday we had a 5% chance of rain, yesterday a 70% likelihood of rain.

a***@gmail.com

2018-10-21 18:33:41 UTC

Thank you all very much,

This became a little more complicated than I expected.

A) Even if he wasn't in the building when the crime was committed, you should
interrogate him.

B) Even if he weren't in the building when the crime was committed, you should
interrogate him.

So, would you say 'B' is incorrect? Or could the subjunctive refer to the past
as well? I am a bit confused here.

Gratefully,
Navi

Peter T. Daniels

2018-10-21 19:24:10 UTC

Post by a***@gmail.com

Thank you all very much,
This became a little more complicated than I expected.
A) Even if he wasn't in the building when the crime was committed, you should
interrogate him.
B) Even if he weren't in the building when the crime was committed, you should
interrogate him.
So, would you say 'B' is incorrect? Or could the subjunctive refer to the past
as well? I am a bit confused here.

B is not possible. You could only use the "even if ..." after it had
already been established that he wasn't.

Jerry Friedman

2018-10-22 01:46:07 UTC

Post by a***@gmail.com

Thank you all very much,
This became a little more complicated than I expected.
A) Even if he wasn't in the building when the crime was committed, you should
interrogate him.
B) Even if he weren't in the building when the crime was committed, you should
interrogate him.
So, would you say 'B' is incorrect? Or could the subjunctive refer to the past
as well? I am a bit confused here.

B is incorrect. The "if he were" construction refers to present time,
not past.

If you knew he wasn't in the building then, you'd start "Even if he
hadn't been in the building" (in standard English). After that I'd
prefer something with "would", such as "you would need to interrogate
him", to "you should interrogate him."

--
Jerry Friedman

a***@gmail.com

2018-10-22 01:56:04 UTC

Post by a***@gmail.com