The “Polite” Conditional?

Deontic mode, not epistemic mode

These are polite requests, not conditioned predictions.

In particular, they use modal verbs in the deontic mode of obligations and permissions, not the epistemic mode of possibilities and predictions. Ditch the “if” part and nothing changes in the formulation.

“Would you get us some coffee?” is just the past-tense version of the present-tense request “Will you get us some coffee?” We use past tense here as a form of polite distancing compared with using present tense.

Remember that “Will you VERB?” is the same as “Do you wish/want to VERB?” This is therefore the present-tense version of “Would you VERB?” and that the same as “Did you wish/want to VERB?” — also in past tense.

Imagine it were this:

• Please say hello for us should you chance upon him in Cairns.

• Did you wish to fetch us some coffee should they have any?

See how polite those requests are? Much more so than this phrasing:

• Get us some of whatever coffee they’ve got left, right now!

They still all amount to requests or polite commands if you prefer. Not “conditionals” that make some prediction about the future or about the past. They are a strategy for recasting imperatives into interrogatives to make them sound less harsh, less demanding. A question like:

• Will you please get me some coffee now?

Has nothing at all to do with the future. It means exactly:

• Are you willing to get me some coffee now?

• Do you wish to get me some coffee now?

• Do you want to get me some coffee now?

• Please get me some coffee now.

Here, though, is what you might think of as an ELL conditional that incorporates a deontic present-tense will in its protasis, then follows with a second deontic present-tense modal in the apodosis:

• If you will all please take your seats, then we can get started.

It is again possible to backshift from present tense to past tense to produce a less harsh request:

• If you would all please take your seats, then we could get started.

But whether you backshift into past tense or leave it in the present tense, it still really means simply this:

• Please take your seats so that we can start.

It’s a command, not the declaration of a conditioned prediction.

English does not have numbered conditionals: would that it were so! That’s but a facile fiction told to people trying to learn English as a second language. Numbering our conditionals is something that is never taught to native speakers, and furthermore is ignored by linguists. It is not real.