It’s a conditional with the imperative, but would technically fall under a variation of the first conditional.

In the example : ‘Let me know, if you can’ what is the conditional?

Hi Sana,

It’s because the verb “can” is irregular; in the present tense it is “can” but in the past tense “could” (in the same way “went” is a past form of “go”). So while we have modal structures that always use “could”, it is still a form of “can”. When they say it is a conditional form, I suppose they are making the point that it is always “could” for certain conditional structures – to create a conditional meaning, rather than to tell us if it is past/present tense.

Phil

Hi Shizuka,

(a) Yes, it’s timeless
(b) Your example is in the zero condition as it’s both present simple, so it would be presented as a rule – if X is true, then Y is also true. If it was in the first conditional we would have “we will be in serious trouble”, so it would refer to a future manifestation of that trouble.
(c) Yes you’re correct; it doesn’t exactly refer to the future, it refers to an imagined possibility, though the “would do” I suppose is technically always going to be a future idea because by definition it’s something you could not have done yet.
(d) Yes, actually you could refer to different periods of time, and this goes onto your question for (e) too. For some reason I’ve not included mixed conditionals in this article but I think I always intended to go back and add them. They are what they sound like, where we take past, present and future forms from the other conditions essentially to create unreal situations in different times. So we could, for example, consider if something happened in the past we could imagine an unreal future:
If I had taken the bus, I would be getting home later.
This page gives quite a good list of examples of them, here.

Phil

The Zero Conditional:
For general rules and principles.

The First Conditional:
For future possibilities and more specific rules.

The Second Conditional:
For imagined possibilities.

The Third Conditional:
For past possibilities that did not happen.

I’ve extracted the above from your article for reference.

Some queries I have on conditionals are:
(a) Am I right to say that the zero conditional is timeless since its for general rules and principals?

(b) While I understand that the first conditional cover future possibilities, e.g. (“If he is late, we will have to go without him – with the reference to the future being evidenced through the use of “will” as in “will have to go without him”), doesn’t the first conditional also cover present possibilities such as “If my mother knows about this, we are in serious trouble”?

(c) My understanding of the Second Conditional is that it is used to refer to future possibilities which are unlikely, e.g. “If I won the lottery, I would buy a new house” (but I know it’s not likely that I will win the lottery). However, isn’t the second conditional also used to refer to present impossible or untrue situations such as “If I had his number, I would call him” (but I don’t have his number currently, so its impossible for me to call him)?

(d) I understand the third conditional to be used for unreal situations in the past, but what about unreal or improbable situations in the future? Is there any conditional that applies to such a situation?

(e) Lastly, I have heard of mixed conditionals, but do not know much about it. May I know what exactly is “mixed conditionals” and would you have some examples of such uses of mixed conditionals?

Thanks!

Regards,
Shizuka