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Sentences (1) and (2) have the form of 2nd conditional, which is unreal at the time of utterance (In this text, the time is past, which is natural in grammar and usage in my intuition). However, some instructors (who explain the paragraph below) say that though (1) and (2) have the same sentence structure, (2) is interpreted as the possible past (real), which means 'Picasso' could have gotten warmer ~ or not and the author still doesn't know the two possibilities. But, I don't, cannot buy that. But they insist that the interpretation is possible, depending on its context. What do you think of this?

  • (1) If creators knew when they were on their way to fashioning a masterpiece, their work would progress only forward. They would halt their idea-generation efforts as they struck gold. But in fact, they backtrack, returning to versions that they had earlier discarded as inadequate. In Beethoven’s most celebrated work, the Fifth Symphony, he scrapped the conclusion of the first movement because it felt too short, only to come back to it later. Had Beethoven been able to distinguish an extraordinary from an ordinary work, he would have accepted his composition immediately as a hit. When Picasso was painting his famous Guernica in protest of fascism, he produced 79 different drawings. Many of the images in the painting were based on his early sketches, not the later variations.

  • (2) If Picasso could judge his creations as he produced them, he would get consistently “warmer” and use the later drawings. But in reality, it was just as common that he got “colder.”

Edwin Ashworth
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신무현
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  • Related: How many conditional type sentences are possible? – livresque Oct 22 '20 at 03:25
  • I'd read (2) as meaning '(2') In those cases where Picasso could judge his creations as he produced them, he would get consistently “warmer” and use the later drawings. But what we find is that it was just as common that he got “colder.” ' But it's not the only possible reading. '(2'') If it were true that Picasso could always judge his creations as he produced them, he would get consistently “warmer” and use the later drawings. But the actuality is that just as commonly he got “colder.” ' – Edwin Ashworth Mar 10 '21 at 12:16
  • (2) should read could have judged and would have got(ten). – Peter Shor Jul 08 '21 at 13:13

1 Answers1

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Native speakers don’t typically consider conditional class numbers when constructing conditionals. These are simply categorisations - with categories that can change from one grammar to another. As such, this answer will focus on the content and interpretation of your sentence of interest:

If Picasso could judge his creations as he produced them, he would get consistently “warmer” and use the later drawings. But in reality, it was just as common that he got “colder.”

Your question is whether the protasis (‘if’ part) can be considered to be a real ‘choice’. Naturally, this needs to be answered in the context provided context. That is, did the author pose the conditional as real or ‘unreal’?

In the given paragraph, the author posits that artists who ‘know’ they are on a ‘winning’ track would stay on that track, and that deviating from the ‘winning’ track demonstrates that they didn’t ‘know’ they were on it at the time.

Given this context, the Picasso protasis sounds ‘real’. That is, the author believes that Picasso would have acted on the information. The hypothetical phrasing allows this belief to be held consistently with the fact that Picasso didn’t act on the information, with the conclusion that the information wasn’t available to Picasso.

Lawrence
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  • Thanks for your deeply thought comment. However, I have more question about yours. – 신무현 Oct 12 '20 at 00:06
  • You’re welcome. Which part of my answer would you like to comment on? – Lawrence Oct 12 '20 at 08:59
  • I have added some related questions more above, please take a look above~ – 신무현 Oct 12 '20 at 10:48
  • Sorry, I don’t see what you’ve changed. The edit trail to your question doesn’t appear to include your changes either. – Lawrence Oct 12 '20 at 19:16
  • I think something wrong. Check out the above! – 신무현 Oct 12 '20 at 22:58
  • There’s nothing in the edit trails above. To see the edit trail, click “edited yesterday” or “edited x days ago” on the right, at the bottom of the post. However, I’ve found your follow-up questions in a rejected edit. Please note that on Stack Exchange, editing posts (in the big boxes) is meant to improve the posts - make Questions clearer or make Answers more complete etc. It isn’t for posting follow-up questions. To request clarification, use the Comments section (these short lines below posts). – Lawrence Oct 13 '20 at 00:50
  • For follow-up questions, post a new question, link to the old question, and explain how the questions differ. – Lawrence Oct 13 '20 at 00:52
  • As for conditionals involving changing things in the past, it’s clear that they must be hypothetical because we can’t change the past. But whether the choice was considered real at the time - the author of the conditional has a free hand in that. – Lawrence Oct 13 '20 at 00:54