If it were you

[Dr.Appalayya]

If it were you, you would have kicked him off the chair.
If I were you, I would have torn Mr.X into pieces.

Can we replace the red letter words with a phrase 'is in the place of'?

 

[kalyson]

"If I were you, I would have torn Mr. X to pieces."

You can say instead:

If I had been in your place, I would have torn Mr. X to pieces.

"If it were you, you would have kicked him off the chair."

You can say:

If it had been you, .....

But to use "in your place" or "in my place" or "in her place", etc., you have to know who is involved. Otherwise you don't know which pronouns to use as a substitution.

 

[Orange Blossom]

Present tense subjunctive:

If it were you, you would have kicked him off the chair.
If I were you, I would have torn tear Mr.X into pieces.

OR:

Past tense subjunctive:

If it had been you, you would have kicked him off the chair.
If I had been you, I would have torn Mr. X into pieces.

Can we replace the red letter words with a phrase 'is in the place of'?

You have hit on the meaning of the 'if' clauses which are in the subjunctive, but you cannot replace the verbs with the phrase you have suggested.

You could say:

If it had been you instead of ______( fill in the blank with a person's name, him, her, or me) you would have kicked him off the chair.

Present tense version doesn't work for the rewrite.

Orange Blossom

 

[Ms Missy]

Re: If it were you, you would have kicked him off the chair.

Once you put yourself in the other person's "shoes" then it's best to say what YOU would have done and not what the other person would have done. It's a bit hard to explain, but suffice it to say that you shouldn't use "you" in both the subject and the predicate since you're hypothetically putting yourself in someone else's place to show how YOU would have handled the situation differently.

Hope that's more help than confusion!

 

[Orange Blossom]

Re: If it were you, you would have kicked him off the chair.

Once you put yourself in the other person's "shoes" then it's best to say what YOU would have done and not what the other person would have done. It's a bit hard to explain, but suffice it to say that you shouldn't use "you" in both the subject and the predicate since you're hypothetically putting yourself in someone else's place to show how YOU would have handled the situation differently.

Hope that's more help than confusion!

In this case, I is not putting him/herself in you's position. If it were you . . . In short, the speaker is replacing "you" with whoever actually was or is there.

Orange Blossom

 

[James123]

Orange is correct. Contrary to fact clauses (those that begin with "if") must be in the subjunctive form to conform to formal standard English. Note, however, that the subjunctive is disappearing in standard and nonstandard AE, being replaced by the simple past in the subordinate clause: "If I was you, . . . "