Re: USAGE: 2nd pers. pron. for God

 --- "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...> wrote:
>
> > I'm not sure about the subjunctive (especially
> since it isn't
> > used that much in standard English anyway),
>
> On the contrary, it isn't used that much in British
> English,
> but it is far more frequent in American English,
> especially
> in subordinate clauses. A sentence like "The judge
> ordered
> that the prisoner should be placed in detention",
> rather than
> "that the prisoner be placed in detention", has a
> distinctly
> British flavor to me.
>
> (One thing that always strikes me about Tony Blair's
> speeches
> and the BBC is that they use the present indicative
> in
> subordinate clauses in ways that sound awkward in
> American
> English.)
>
it's one of the few things i actually prefer about
AmEng ( on many points i'm neutral, and on some i
prefer BritEng ): that it uses the subjunctive.
BritEng tends, as you point out, to paraphrase, using
'may', 'might', 'shall' and 'should' instead. i don't
know whether this is part of the reason so many people
can't get their sequence of tenses right in
conditional clauses, but it certainly leads to
verbiage

at the same time, bare subjunctives, as in your
example, often sound odd to my ears ( tho i rather
like the oddness ). i imagine the most british
rephrasing would be 'the judge ordered the prisoners
to be placed in detention' where you have to do some
grammatical gymnastics to avoid taking 'the prisoners'
as object of 'ordered' ( or else put it down to
BritEng's passion for vagueness and misleading
phraseology )

bn

=====
bnathyuw | landan | arR
stamp the sunshine out | angelfish
your tears came like anaesthesia | phèdre

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