As the title says: Why is e.g. 靴を脱いだとしたら、家に入り下さい considered unnatural and 靴を脱ぎ終えたら、家に入り下さい is the more natural way of communicating “Please enter the home after you have finished taking off your shoes”
If all V[過去形]としたら are unnatural usage — what is the deeper grammtical reason for it being unnatural?
These are from a multiple choice test
靴を○○、家に入り下さい。
1）脱ぎ終えたら
2）脱いだとたん
3）脱ぎだしたら
4）脱いだとしたら
And I understood why 2) and 3) were wrong but not why 1) was right and 4) was not.
I do not know whether 入り下さい is wrong as opposed to 入って下さい but then it is a typo in the test. Could you explain why this probably is a typo in the original document?
That’s definitely not a typo. たら tends to work to explain a succession of events as used in the example above. It’s like saying “once you’ve removed your shoes…”
So why isn’t it any of the other options?
脱いだとたん means something unexpected happened after you removed your shoes. Not applicable here.
脱ぎだしたら sounds like you forcibly removed your shoes, so it’s kind of weird in this case.
脱いだとしたら unlike regular たら forms which can work as both a conditional and a sequence indicator, としたら is used exclusively as a conditional. “If you happened to remove your shoes…” something like that.
There are many examples of たら working as an indicator of successive events.
宿題が完了できたら、遊びに行く “I’m gonna go hang out after I’ve completed my homework”.
It’s a bit of an overlap between the way sequential events are presented in English, and the versatility of conditional forms in Japanese, which may make this a bit confusing at face value.
By typo I meant the missing お in 入り下さい and not that 脱ぎ終えたら should not be the answer to the question. But thanks for your comprehensive explanation. That としたら marks hypothetical use only was exactly the bit of information that I was missing to understanding this. I thought that this had something to do with としたら being preceeded by a verb in past form.
お入りください is a more respectful way to say 入ってください, but it needs the お.
I see — thanks for explaining.