Tenses and its relationship to Timeframe

In the earlier post, it was mentioned that tenses, in particular, the ones that are highlighted below, will be examined more closely in the next post. Let us look at the extract, with the highlighted tenses, that is reproduced below:

The poet hopes that the ability to appreciate the wonders of nature, which he had at his infancy and right up to adulthood, will continue to be a part of him even when he becomes elderly. He would rather die than have this sense of awe and wonder disappear as he ages. For to him, life becomes meaningless if he were to lose interest in the natural beauty around him.

 Tenses are used in writing to indicate the time-frame in which a particular action or state of being occurs. Let us now look at the examples given above.

In using the present tense at the start, `hopes', the author is saying that the hope is ever-present, something that is still present in the poet. The appreciation of nature is something that the poet had in the past, in his infancy and he hopes it will continue, be with him int he future too.

So far, so good - the use of the different tenses is easy to understand when one realises that the different tenses are used to denote different periods of time, present, past and future. However, now, we come to the tricky part.

`life becomes (present tense)... if he were (past, plural)'

If' indicates a conditional state of affairs. Whatever is stated hasn't happened. So, here, what is stated is a possibility, and in English the past tense is used in such situations. It is probable that the intention is to suggest a situation in which the probability, or hypothesis, has already occurred and hence, the past tense should be used. Once the reader is placed within the time-frame of the occurrence of the hypothesis, the natural outcome or `truth' or `statement of fact' takes place and so, the present tense is employed. Now, why is the tense for plural subjects used even though the subject or pronoun is in the singular? When such conditional situations are presented, `were' is used even when the subject or pronoun is singular. It could be, because, since the situation or action is merely a hypothesis and is not real, it does not matter if the subject is singular or plural, hence a neutral `were' is used, merely to indicate past tense and not subject-verb agreement.