The doctor ordered x-rays to check if her leg was broken. If it were broken, she would stay in a cast for approximately three to five months; if her leg were not broken, she would still need to have physical therapy.
The doctor ordered x-rays to check if her leg was broken. If it was broken, she would stay in a cast for approximately three to five months; if her leg was not broken, she would still need to have physical therapy.
Oh crap, here I go trying to answer a grammar question:
I think the right answer is “…if it was broken.”
Because it is still unknown at the time the speaker uttered the sentence, it could not be considered a condition contrary to fact as in, “If I were king…” when I am certainly not and never will be.
I think it also depends on the time the statement is spoken. If it is said in real time (after the doctor has ordered the x-rays, but before they results are known to anyone), I would say it this way:
Ten minutes ago, the doctor ordered x-rays to check if her leg is broken. If it is broken, she will stay in a cast for approximately three to five months; if her leg is not broken, she will still need to have physical therapy.
The subjunctive mood would be used in contrary-to-fact situations:
The doctor ordered x-rays to check if her leg was broken. Had it been broken, she would have needed to stay in a cast for approximately three to five months; since her leg was not broken, she only needed to have physical therapy.
There’s a question that’s always nagged me about the English subjunctive, but nobody I’ve ever asked has known the answer. Most people say “I wish that she was here”. But that sounds a little wrong, so a lot of people say “I wish that she were here” instead. But when I looked it up in 501 English Verbs, it said that the subjunctive conjugation of the verb ‘be’ is ‘be’. So should it really be expressed “I wish that she be here”? That sounds weird, but that’s the only conclusion I can come up with.
Arrgh! 501 Verbs is WRONG! – or at least incomplete.
English, like German, has two subjunctive moods; the first subjunctive is expressed using naked infinitives, and is used sort of like an imperative: “I command that he be brought before me”; “it is my wish that she be here on the 10th.”
The second subjunctive is the familiar “past-tense-looking” subjunctive, which is used to express that “contrary to fact” business: “I wish she were here.” Check out my sig for a more coherent explanation – I’m tired.
And the first of these is the iussive subjunctive, if I remember correctly from about thirty years ago. (The construction is also used in Latin, and French IIRC.)
It took me a long time to realize that the note in the prayer-book that indicated the place in the service for The Sermon (if there be one) was not a piece of rustic English.
IMO, neither is correct, because a correct conditional would be “The doctor ordered x-rays to check if her leg were broken”. Having corrected that, then the first sample would be correct. It doesn’t sound natural but it’s technically correct.
There’s an ‘if’. There doesn’t need to be a ‘then’. You wouldn’t conjugate “if her leg were broken, then…” differently than “see if her leg were broken.” In both cases it’s a counterfactual situation.
"If"s are not automatically conditional. Conditionals, so far as I know, have a condition and a result clause. The sentence above does not fit the pattern of any of the four English conditionals (named zero, first, second, and third conditional.)
It’s a non-conditional “if” which is used in the exact same sense as “whether.”
Isn’t this just a matter or singular/plural? If the sentence used “legs”, it’d definately be “were”, right? I think the answer is “was”, simply because it’s one leg.
Oh, but we do: it’s mostly archaic, but the optative is yet another use of the subjunctive mood in English, and still remains in constructions like “God defend New Zealand” or “Bless you!”. It’s widely misunderstood - most people interpret it as an imperative {God, I instruct you to defend New Zealand} or as a declarative {God defends New Zealand}, but it’s used to express a wish or desire that the speaker has no direct influence over: “May God defend New Zealand.” An optative like “Bless you!” would probably be rendered these days as “May God bless you”, since the speaker has no direct power to bless, but can only hope that God will oblige: as was pointed out in another thread, “May the Force be with you!” would render quite neatly into the optative as “The Force be with you!”.