Re: ``If you don't want it, there are other nations who will''

Joe Fineman wrote:

Oddly, I would have had no trouble at all if "want" had been "buy".
That is probably the key to the clunkiness. In "If you don't buy it",
"buy" is actually in the future tense, but appears in the present
tense, according to some rule or other, because it is in a dependent
clause. But in "If you don't want it", "want" is actually in the
present tense. To understand the sentence, I have to abandon my first
guess at the grammar of such a sentence.

I am familiar with that bizarre meaning of 'tense' according to which English has a future one (roughly, 'corresponding to something which in Latin would be rendered by a tense').

I am not familiar with any analysis in which, '[i]n "If you don't buy it", "buy" is actually in the future tense'.

I do nevertheless accept your point that 'If you don't buy it' has an irrealis sense which is not necessarily there in 'If you don't want it'.

Colin
.

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