“When symptoms persist, seek medical advice”.
You who watch television or listen to the radio have certainly heard this phrase. Whenever a drug is announced, then a blue screen appears with the famous sayings in white, warning the consumer that he should seek medical attention if the symptoms are not eliminated.
What you probably didn't know is that, behind the famous prayer, there is an interesting linguistic consideration. After all, what is the correct way: to persist or to persist? Well, in this story there is no right or wrong, since both forms can be used, as long as we pay attention to the meaning that each of them can have.
In the form “The symptoms persist”, we find the preposition “a” introducing a clause that expresses the idea of condition, therefore, a conditional clause. I can then replace the preposition “a” by another equivalent, in the case “if”, without any loss of meaning. "If symptoms persist, see a doctor." I can also substitute the term “case”, “If symptoms persist, see a doctor”.
In the other possible form, “As symptoms persist”, there is a significant change in meaning. O verb “persist”, in the infinitive mode, when introduced by “ao”, constitutes a temporal clause, which can be replaced by the adverb of time “when”. Then notice the difference between the constructions:
If symptoms persist, seek medical attention.
When symptoms persist, seek medical attention.
Ideally, the warning should be “If symptoms persist”, as it represents the meaning of the statement more clearly and objectively. This will certainly make the phrase more understandable to many consumers!
By Luana Castro
Graduated in Letters
