A poster sent me the below PM with a link to this problem:
When I was going through the SC questions in the forum, I came across these two questions which tests the subjunctive. So far any subjunctive sentences, I use would and was sticking to it. These two questions has OA which has "will" instead of "would". I am not sure where these questions came from. But want to double check with you as I don't want to confuce my understanding.
Below are the links for both the questions. I would highly appreciate, if you could provide your suggestions for these questions.
As Stuart mentioned, above, we do use the subjunctive when we are trying to talk about something that is contrary to reality or won't actually happen. We use the future tense to talk about what will actually happen (or, at least, what we believe will actually happen).
So, let's say I bought a lottery ticket yesterday, and I didn't win anything. I might say, "If I had won the lottery yesterday, I would have quit my job and moved to Tahiti."
I'm using the subjunctive because I didn't actually win the lottery; therefore, I'm not actually quitting my job and moving to Tahiti - that's contrary to reality.
Let's say I plan to buy a lottery ticket tomorrow and I don't know yet whether I will win. I might say, "If I win the lottery tomorrow, I will quit my job and move to Tahiti."
In this case, I'm telling you what I actually plan to do, for real, if I do win the lottery. So I use future tense - this time, what I'm saying is not contrary to reality. I've described what I really will do if I win.
So, on a problem like the one above, the question we have to ask ourselves is whether the sentence is talking about something contrary to reality or whether it is "predicting the future" - or saying what is actually expected to happen if something else happens first. In this case, it's the latter situation - if the bureaucracy persists in discriminating, the CEOs will, in fact, expose themselves to litigation. Make sense?
