The 'as if' Problem

Alan Watkins

There is a problem about as if It concerns both the mood and the tense of the verb that follows the phrase. This is often, though not always, the verb to be. Is or were? Was or Were? Let us begin with the authorities. Neither Eric Partridge, in Usage and Abusage, nor G. H. Vallins, in Good English and Better English, makes, as far as I can see, any reference to the problem. But H. W. and F. G. Fowler, in The King's English (3rd edn, 1930), are, as usual, robust to the point of dogmatism.

'There is one corrupt and meaningless form, apparently gaining ground (they write], that calls for protest. When a clause begins with as if it must be remembered that there is an ellipse. / treat her as tenderly a8 If she were my daughter would be in full treat her as tenderly as I should if she were, ete-If this is forgotten, there is a danger in some sentences . . . of using a present indicative in the place where the verb were stands.'

H. W. Fowler, in Modern English Usage (2nd rev. edn, 1965), adopts the same arguMent from ellipsis. The illustration he provides is longer than that quoted above, but does not affect the substance of the arguMent. He goes on to say that : 'As though, about which the same demonstration is not possible, is precisely equivalent to as if, and is subject to the same rule ...

he tendency to put the verb in a present tense is especially common after it looks or seems., At this point Fowler weakens. He Proceeds: 'Here there may be the justification that the clause gives a supposed actual fact; but s ornetimes the supposition is admittedly false.'

He accepts 'It looks as if the Party is bringing pressure on Dr Adenauer,' and 'To the observer from without it seems as if there has been some lack of stage-manageMent,' but rejects 'It is not as though a s.ound liquor is supplied.' In the last example he is unsure about whether is should be rePlaced by was or were; one of the two, .a.nyway. This is clearly unsatisfactory. Further investigation is called for. To begin with, it seems to me that expandi .ng, a Phrase or clause to demonstrate what isreally' meant is a perilous proceeding; as P. erilous as extrapolation in statistics. If we had wanted to say such-and-such in a particularly long-winded way (1 treat her as tenderly as I should if she were my daughter'), we should have said it in that way in the first place. Conversely, we cannot just remove words ',tom sentences--claim them to be somehow understood'—and then expect the resulting

sentences always to make grammatical sense. For example, in 'The cancellation of the match, which was due to rain, caused distress' we cannot remove which was and retain due to. If we wish to remove which was we must replace due to with owing to or on account of. Or again, we can say 'He was not a batsman or a bowler' or 'He was neither a batsman nor a bowler' or 'He was not a batsman, nor was he a bowler.' What we cannot do is, in this third sentence, abstract was he and come up with 'He was not a batsman, nor a bowler' (though admittedly this last, to my mind incorrect, form is used by numerous writers).

But this is a general point. I return to as if Fowler surely weakens the elliptical—or, if you prefer it, the expansionist—case considerably by saying that as ifis precisely (his word) equivalent to as though but that 'the same demonstration is not possible' where the latter is concerned. Quite so. Though does not mean the same as if Yet the Fowlerian demonstration depends on splitting as from if If as if were precisely equivalent to as though, one would have thought the experiment would work just as well with as though. A. P. Herbert, in What a Word, advises us to eschew as though for as if on the ground that though is not the same as if: but he does not go into the whole problem. For myself, I follow Herbert's suggestion without accepting Fowler's explanation.

And there is another reason why I do not accept it. If the main verb is in the past perfect tense, the verb after as ifis commonly in the past perfect tense too. (I deal with mood later.) Thus we should write 'I treated her as if she were my daughter.' The Fowlerian expansion of this would be 'I treated her as I should have done if she had been etc.' We might write 'I treated her as if she had been etc': but it is unlikely.

It is surely preferable to regard as ifas one phrase, such as as well as, fulfilling the same function as (though not in its grammar the equivalent of) like. AS a rough preliminary generalisation, we may take it that the grammar of as if is comparable to that of if That is, there is a distinction between straight-conditional and hypotheticalconditional sentences. Thus: 'If he was interested in Lucky Jim, he can borrow my copy of That Uncertain Feeling' (straight); 'If he were a real Amis scholar, he would not confuse the librarian with the lecturer' (hypothetical: he is not a real Amis scholar at all but a bit of a fraud: though here there could also be a genuine doubt as to his precise status as an Amis authority. See below).

But our troubles are only just beginning. In the 'daughter' example, two things are clear: first, she is not my daughter at all (she's my mistress's child by a former lover, actually) and, second, I treat her as if she were (kiss her goodnight, read her stories, take her to the cinema, see that she does her homework, that kind of thing). There is no dispute whatever about the facts: we all know them. The situation is what I call STRAIGHT-HYPOTHETICAL.

Consider, however, the sentence 'He looked as if he were about to be sick' (after being told that the job was going to someone else), And contrast this with 'He looked as if he was about to be sick' (which wasn't surprising, because he had been recklessly mixing Scotch with Port and, sure enough, he was sick, all over Angela's best carpet).

We can put the main verb in the present tense and produce 'He looks as if he is about to be sick' (which isn't surprising, because

he's been recklessly mixing etc. There's a plastic bucket in the bathroom. Oh my God). I call this usage PREDICTIVE. The rule is that we preserve sequences of tenses in the indicative mood.

The grammar of sentences which purport to state a FACT is similar, though here

sequence of tense need not be preserved.

For example, 'It looks as if Mr Callaghan's Government has collapsed,' or `Mr Cal laghan's Government is behaving as if it has collapsed.' On the other hand, `Mr Callaghan's Government is behaving as if

it were collapsing' is expressing DOUBT rather than purporting to state a fact: but more of that shortly.

In the meantime, let us return to 'He looked as if he were about to be sick' (be cause the job went to someone else). Do we really, do we honestly, do we sincerely mean that there was a danger of his being

sick ? Surely not. We are speaking META PHORICALLY: we mean only that he looked miserable. There seems little doubt that

when the sentence is metaphorical, and the main verb is in the past tense, the verb after as if must be in the subjunctive mood: were rather than was.

Yet, oddly enough, were does not seem to work so well if, in a metaphorical sen tence, the main verb is in the present tense.

'He looks as if he were about to be sick' (because the job went to someone else). 'Oh, don't be so silly, he's not about to be sick at all, he's just miserable.' Admittedly we may be in genuine doubt as to whether he is about to be sick or not, in which case were is not only admissible but probably necessary. Again, were is probably necessary in straight-hypothetical examples, where there is no question about the factual position : 'I treat her as if she were my daughter' or 'I behave as if I were Lord of the Manor' (though, as everybody knows, I only rent a cottage

from a farmer).

Being-about-to-be-sick, in as if sentences, can raise questions of doubt, of metaphor or of prediction. Sentences about the weather are usually predictive merely. 'It looks as it would look if it were about to rain.' Why are you speaking in that funny way? Do you think it's going to rain or not?' We surely say or write 'It looks as if it is about to rain.' Or let us put the verb in the past tense. The second verb remains past indicative, I think, irrespective of whether it rained or not. 'It looked as if it was about to rain' (in fact it didn't, but it looked as if it was about to). Likewise with a fact-stating sentence with the main verb in the past: `Mr Heath's Government behaved as if it was about to collapse' (in fact it didn't, but everyone thought at the time it would). Contrast this with a virtually identical sentence which refers to a past state of doubt: 'Mr Heath's Government behaved as if it were about to collapse.' The distinction between purporting to state a fact (which can refer to the past) and expressing a doubt is a fine one, but the distinction remains, As if sentences expressing doubt are perhaps most tricky of all. 'Do you think he's in the pay of the Russians?' 'Well, he certainly behaves as if he is a spy' (with all that vodka and those mysterious visits of his to St James's Park). Or: 'He behaved as if he was a spy' (and was duly sentenced to fourteen years at the Old Bailey). Could we say 'He behaved as if he were a spy' (and was sentenced etc)? Surely the implication of the last sentence is that he was not a spy at all? Of course we may believe that, owing to his rash behaviour with radio sets, Russian courses, visits to St James's Park or whatever, he fell foul of the authorities and was unjustly sentenced by a time-serving judge. But this is not the immediate point. The use of were after a main verb in the past tense' implies either that he was not a spy at all or that there was some doubt about the matter. Does the conviction at the Old Bailey, so to speak, remove the doubt ? Perhaps not—any more than the fact that it did not rain altered the predictive nature of 'It looked as if it was about to rain.' Generally, though there is a distinction between purporting to state a fact and expressing a doubt, the distinction is difficult to draw in practice: the choice between is and were, or was and were, seems to depend on the strength of our conviction that such-andsuch is the case.

Moreover, being-a-spy can raise questions not only of doubt but also of straighthypothesis and metaphor, Straight-hypothesis: 'He behaves as if he were a spy' (though we all know he's really a foolish fellow who read too many paperbacks in the 1960s). In the metaphorical case, not only do we know that he is not a spy but we do not think he behaves like one, not really: we are merely trying to put things in a colourful way. Is or were? I wish I was (or were) sure. I am at least sure that the business is not as simple as Fowler makes it out to be.