Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: English Subjunctive

From:Andrew Patterson <endipatterson@...>
Date:Tuesday, November 4, 2003, 9:15
I've been bringing together various ideas on the subjunctive from various
sources including this site and my own ideas. This is what I've come up
with:

The subjunctive is a mood which expresses ideas as conceived rarher than as
fact.It's counterpart is the indicative mood. All other moods such as the
interogative, imperative and statements (What is this mood called by the
way?)can be expressed in either the indicative or subjunctive.

The subjunctive has some features in common with the catenatives.

The past subjunctive expresses wishes, contingencies and hypothetical
situations and uses the past tense to indicate psychological distance in
the same way as the past modal verbs.

In the past subjunctive, the words "if", "as if", "wish", "suppose", etc
are followed by the subject and the subjunctive past which is the same as
the past simple except that "be" is always "were".

The present subjunctive expresses commands, exhortations and prospective
events. It uses the infinitive to indicate immediacy in the same way as the
imperative.

The present subjunctive has two main structures:

a) the
verbs "ask", "insist", "order", "propose", "recommend", "request", "suggest2
, etc followed by "that" the subject and infinitive.

b) "It is" followed by the
adjectives: "desirable", "esssential", "imperative", "necessary", "vital",
etcfollowed by "that", the subject and infinitive.

There are also some "fossilised" idiomatic expressions that use the
subjunctive in different ways. Fossilised idioms mainly use the present
subjunctive (controversial statement correct me if I'm wrong.)

One last question:

Is "get used to" a use of the past subjunctive?

Reply

David Barrow <davidab@...>