Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Subjunctive

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Tuesday, January 28, 2003, 19:40
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. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.