Please help. I’m going backwards and forwards on this one:
First sentence in a story about a policeman, who we know to be dead, from today’s paper:
“If constable X were alive, police believe they would have enough evidence to prosecute him for [crime X]”
To me that says the police would only have had enough evidence had constable X lived – but the story makes clear that “enough evidence” has been collected nonetheless.
The thing is, it sometimes sounds correct for the context when I say it aloud.
Is it right or wrong?
If it is wrong, what would make it right (without a drastic rewrite)? How about: “If constable X were alive, police believe they would have HAD enough evidence to …”?
Unless the evidence hinges on his being alive (to corroborate a confession, etc.), the sentence is incorrect. I think I would just leave off the conditional part, state that there has been sufficient evidence collected, and assume the reader can make the conclusion.
It’s ambiguous, but I don’t see where it breaks any rules of standard English, nor where it unambiguously provides the meaning you suggest.
Logically speaking, it’s a P->Q ^ ~P statement (i.e., “If P is true then Q is true, but P is not true”). Such a statement does not logically lead to the ~Q conclusion.
It’s grammatically correct, but the modifier (“if he were alive”) is misplaced. As published, it seems to modify the closed verb phrase (have enough evidence) when in fact if refers to the second verb phrase (prosecute constable x). It’s better as Exapno Mapcase rearranges it, with the modifier next to the verb phrase it modifies.
Or you could do a more drastic rearrangement: “Were Constable X still alive, police believe that they could [successfully] prosecute him for Crime X with the evidence now available.”
Police claim to have sufficient evidence to procecute constable X and would do so, were he still alive.
Thus divorcing completely the concepts of sufficient evidence and X’s status. Whether he is alive or dead is now clearly irrelevant to the quantity of evidence.
Does anyone doubt what the sentence means? Did the sentence really trip anyone up on reading it?
Although I can see the ambiguity if I look for it, the meaning is both immediate and aparent to me. In such cases, I’m not too worried about technical ambiguity.
However, it may be that it tripped some folks up; if so, then the ambiguity is a problem.
I can think of a situation where being alive could in itself be evidence of a crime - namely if you faked your own death so a spouse (or yourself under a fake name) could collect insurance.
But how far do we measure “getting tripped up”? I find it very jarring to read a sentence that begins with a modifier that then doesn’t agree with the subject, rearrange it all in my head, mini-rant about sloppy writing, and then carry on. Yes, I can take a moment to recast what’s written and figure out what is meant, but should I have to go through all that?
And honestly, I still don’t feel the original sentence in the OP is clear.
My two cents. The sentence is both ambiguous and accurate. I got the meaning on first reading, aided by the fact that it’s a relatively short sentence. A longer one with such a “remove” between contingency and verb would have been more of a problem. So, had I spotted the ambiguity, I would have recast the sentence. But I don’t think it’s surprising the ambiguity wasn’t noticed. It’s not a howler.