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Should in conditional protases

This article examines the accounts commonly given of should in conditional protases and argues that, in allowing should as an alternative to the past tense in the protases of counterfactuals, English grammar harbors an inconsistency. It also questions the common assumption that a conditional protasis with should expresses a lower degree of likelihood than one with a present tense. It is argued that this alleged smaller likelihood is in fact the consequence of the theoreticity conveyed by both conditional and putative should, and that pragmatically this theoreticity also accounts for the fact that should 4infinitive is chiefly found in the protasis of conditional sentences whose apodosis contains a present decision as to the action to be taken when the event referred to in the protasis takes place.