collecting English subjunctives

DJW   Thursday, March 24, 2005, 02:12 GMT
Number 14, tell him to come along if he likes. This is not subjunctive. As far I can tell, "if he like" would be wrong here. It is not correct to suppose that the subjunctive is always called for by the word "if". It has to be a counterfactual or probable counterfactual. Even in the Marx case, Marx was talking about a hypothetical capitalist with a hobby and saying, "now suppose he has a hobby", although there is no real counterfactual in such a hypothesis either....
DJW   Thursday, March 24, 2005, 02:16 GMT
Preterite is the past. Ved is saying that even in Old English the past subjunctive had the same form as the past indicative. Those phrases can always be made to sound more subjunctive by converting into a were-form: were he still in love with her tomorrow. Of course, this applies in the singular only, as the forms are the same in the plural even using the verb to be.
D   Thursday, March 24, 2005, 11:56 GMT
In modern English, too, there is no difference between ``past subjunctive'' and simple past tense, except for the verb to be. For this reason, it seems doubtful to many people, including me, that this past construction with were should be called subjunctive. It seems to me that there is just a special exception against using ``was'' for a counterfactual condition in the past.

I will point out that the ``present subjunctive'' is not always counterfactual, unlike the past construction. For example: I suggest that he brush his teeth. It requires true twisting of words to find counterfactuality in that sentence, unlike the sentence ``If there were a subjunctive in English, it would be easier to learn about the English subjunctive.''
Ved   Thursday, March 24, 2005, 18:46 GMT
"If he still loved her..." is a subjunctive. It was derived from the preterite subjunctive in Old English. Some classes of verbs had different indicative and subjunctive forms in the preterite (=simple past tense) and some did not.

At very advanced levels, I sometimes explain to my students that what we use in this type of conditional clause is historically not really a past tense, as they often have difficulty getting over the fact that we use a past tense form to talk about the future.

Incidentally, the Spanish word for "if" (=si) does not call for a subjunctive, but must always be followed by an indicative.

It gets weirder with "maybe". The expression "a lo mejor" takes an indicative, but ¨quizás¨ and ¨quizá¨always call for a subjunctive.

Thus, we say:

A lo mejor viene.

But:

Quizá(s) venga.

Both sentences mean "(S)he/You (formal) may come."
DJW   Friday, March 25, 2005, 04:13 GMT
Ved, si does not always call for a subjunctive in Spanish, but it often does, depending on whether the condition is "open" or hyphothetical. Examples given in Using Spanish: A Guide to Contemporary Usage (Cambridge University Press): si viene, se lo diremos (if he comes, we shall tell him), but si viniera manana, se lo diriamos (diacritics not included at this time in the morning), meaning "if he came tomorrow, we would tell". If he were here: si estuviera aqui - subjunctive in both languages.
greg   Friday, March 25, 2005, 13:00 GMT
Ved : "Incidentally, the Spanish word for "if" (=si) does not call for a subjunctive, but must always be followed by an indicative".

(Almost the) same in French :

<Je te montrerai, si tu viens> : I'll show you, if you come
<Montrerai> = indicative future.
<Viens> = indicative present.

<Je te montrerais, si tu venais> : I'd show you, if you came
<Montrerais> = conditional present.
<Venais> = indicative imperfect (equivalent to English preterit).

Subjunctive is impossible in the phrase either before or after <si>.


Ved : do you agree that a tense like English preterit may sometimes refer to time (I saw him yesterday) and sometimes to modality (if I were you... - were it not for...) or to potentiality (if I were to...) ?
Ved   Friday, March 25, 2005, 16:11 GMT
The modern English simple past tense, as one grammarian aptly put it, indicates the speaker's distance from the action/state/event, either in attitude or in time.
Ved   Friday, March 25, 2005, 16:15 GMT
DJW, it's true, "si" takes the past subjunctive in Spanish type two or three conditional clauses, but it never takes the present subjunctive in types zero and one.
greg   Friday, March 25, 2005, 17:45 GMT
Ved : elegant, exhaustive definition indeed. Thanx.
Ved   Friday, March 25, 2005, 23:30 GMT
My pleasure.
JJM   Monday, March 28, 2005, 10:01 GMT
It's clear the subjunctive is on the wane in English. It is still more widespread in AE use; BE seems to almost go out of its way to avoid it these days.

I rather suspect that eventually, the subjunctive will be confined to idiomatic expressions such as:

God Save The Quuen

or

God bless you!
Ved   Monday, March 28, 2005, 19:23 GMT
Yes, but this will probably be a longer process in North American language.
Travis   Monday, March 28, 2005, 20:41 GMT
One thing is that I'd bet that the subjunctive will stay around far longer in active use outside fixed expressions and like for "to be", "to have", and the old modal verbs (not the new modal phrases and quasi-modal verbs) than for "normal" verbs, where they will most likely be replaced far sooner with modal constructions, especially ones using "would". This is directly in parallel what has happened with the subjunctive inflection in German, where outside of formal writing and like it's been mostly displaced by constructions utilizing "würde", but the synthetic subjunctive mood is still used significantly for "sein", "haben", and the modals, with which constructions using "würde" are generally not used.
JJM   Wednesday, March 30, 2005, 12:19 GMT
One line of thought is that it's not a subjunctive unless it looks like a subjunctive ie, the verb function is clearly indicated by its form. Approaching it this way, the only traces of the subjunctive in English would seem to be:

1. No inflection of the base verb form in the present third person singular - the only remaining inflection for person in English verbs except "be" and the modals (which have no such inflection).

2. Use of the base verb form "be" instead of "am, are, is."

3. Use of "were" in the first and third person singular instead of "was."

4. Possibly, the odd idiomatic use of "had better."