Re: Subjunctive

En réponse à Roger Mills <romilly@...>:

> Christophe wrote:
>
> > En réponse à "John C." <Grex37@...>:
>  Can you use it
> > > with a
> > > past, present, AND future tense (my language has a future tense
> unlike
> > > English)?
> >
> > Portuguese does it, so you can too ;))) .
>
> Is it actually used, or just a relic in the official grammar books?
From what I know, it's still used in Portugal at least. How often I don't know.
Maybe it's like the French simple past, still alive but restricted to the
literary language.

> Spanish
> has a future subj. (according to the grammar of the Real Academia, but
> unmentioned in teaching grammars)-- amare, amares, amare, etc., app.
> derived
> from the old Latin impf. subj.???? (I don't recall the forms for
> irreg.
> verbs like haber, ser etc, nor whether there is a  fut.perf. subj.)
Haber: hubiere, ser: fuere, etc... It's indeed derived from the Latin imperfect
subjunctive. And there is indeed a future perfect subjunctive, simply haber in
the future subjunctive followed by the past participle: hubiere comido.

   I
> came
> across it once, in a legal document.  Nowhere else in years of
> reading.
>
I actually never saw it in my life except in an old grammar book :)) .

>
> in order to avoid cloning Latin/Romance, devise some unexpected places
> where
> a subjunctive must occur.
>
Or add other moods, which will oblige to restrict the use of the subjunctive
and make the language look less like a clone of a Romance tongue. For instance,
add an optative, mood of the wish :)) (I think Ancient Greek had both a
subjunctive and an optative, didn't it? So it could be a place to look to see
how it was handled).

Christophe.

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