UNREALITY IN ENGLISH CONDITIONAL CLAUSES: FORM AND MEANING

Unreality constitutes a central semantic and functional category in English grammar, and conditional clauses represent one of its most systematic and theoretically rich realizations. Conditional constructions allow speakers to conceptualize hypothetical, potential, and counterfactual situations by establishing logical relations between conditions and consequences that do not correspond directly to factual reality. This article provides a comprehensive, Scopus-ready analysis of unreality in English conditional clauses with a focus on the interaction between grammatical form and semantic interpretation. The study utilizes corpus-based examples from COCA and BNC, incorporates cross-linguistic comparison with Uzbek and Russian conditional clauses, and applies descriptive, functional, and cognitive frameworks. Particular attention is given to tense–aspect selection, modal auxiliaries, clause structure, and pragmatic factors involved in hypothetical, counterfactual, and mixed conditionals. The article demonstrates that unreality in English conditionals is primarily encoded through modal remoteness and complex syntactic patterns. The findings reveal a coherent system that reflects graded distance from reality and provides practical insights for translation studies, language teaching, and applied linguistic research.