present for future conditional

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:50 AM -0400 8/22/01, Mark Mandel wrote:
>On NPR last night (about 6:12 pm, 2001-8-21), in a story on Jesse Helms's
>retirement announcement, a North Carolinian whose name I didn't catch said
>of Elizabeth Dole "I think she wins if she runs", meaning what I would have
>said as "I think she'll win if she runs".
>
>I think we had a thread about this a few months back, but iirc that was
>mostly or entirely in sports usage.
>
The thread we had was more the present for the counterfactual:
Examples from our first (1995) exchange on the topic (the second and
third were my inventions, but based on actual citations involving the
sportscasters' historical counterfactual present):

"If Justice doesn't catch that it's a double and the go-ahead run is in."

"If the Glide doesn't give that hard foul, Kidd goes in for an
uncontested lay-up"

"if he doesn't deflect that pass, it goes for an easy touchdown"

larry
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