There is no subjunctive mood in English.

Aquatar   Tue Apr 25, 2006 10:13 pm GMT
Travis

I admit my knowledge of grammatical terms is not the best. Possibly it should be, my being interested in languages, but while I am interested in the concept of grammar, I'm afraid I don't know all the exact grammatical terms.

So, I am not sure if you are saying my example is wrong, or the terminology I used to describe it?
Kirk   Tue Apr 25, 2006 10:15 pm GMT
I always think it's amusing when this issue comes up and some claim that the marked subjunctive is "dead" in English. It may be in some dialects, but a morphologically marked subjunctive is still present in my dialect even in informal speech. It's natural for me.

People can deny its existence and that does indeed apply to some dialects but there are plenty out there for which the subjunctive is alive and ticking. (And we're not just old fogeys resisting change--I'm 22).
greg   Tue Apr 25, 2006 10:37 pm GMT
Travis : « greg, könntest du das auf Deutsch neu sagen? »

Travis : tut mir leid > bin faul heute Nacht. Kirk : kannst du das auf englisch übersetzen, bitte ?
greg   Tue Apr 25, 2006 10:39 pm GMT
das = sieh Seiten 1 & 2.
Kirk   Tue Apr 25, 2006 10:51 pm GMT
<<Kirk : kannst du das auf englisch übersetzen, bitte ?>>

Haha, natürlich:

<<Sauf bien sûr dans les phrases où il n'y pas de condition : <I prefer that she play here> (souhait) par exemple.>>

"Except of course in the phrases where there's no condition: <I prefer that she play here> (desire/wish) for example"
Aquatar   Tue Apr 25, 2006 11:07 pm GMT
'I prefer that she play here'

This is more likely to be phrased 'I'd prefer that she playED here' or possibly I'd prefer her to play here.

I think so anyway, when you have to think about English consciously, it can suddenly become pretty messed up.
Mxsmanic   Wed Apr 26, 2006 4:46 am GMT
"I'd prefer that she played here" is a second conditional. "I prefer that she play here" isn't a conditional at all.

Additionally, "played" in the conditional above is a subjunctive; it's just conjugated the same way as the past simple for regular verbs. The subjective is easier to spot with verbs like "be": "I'd prefer that she were here." Using the subjective makes the hypothetical nature of the statement clear; using the indicative implies that it has actually happened and is hard to justify in this context.
Kirk   Wed Apr 26, 2006 5:30 am GMT
<<Additionally, "played" in the conditional above is a subjunctive; it's just conjugated the same way as the past simple for regular verbs. The subjective is easier to spot with verbs like "be": "I'd prefer that she were here." Using the subjective makes the hypothetical nature of the statement clear; using the indicative implies that it has actually happened and is hard to justify in this context.>>

I agree that at least to me "I'd prefer that she played here" isn't perfectly interchangeable with "I'd prefer she play here." They're close but not the same.
Tommie   Wed Apr 26, 2006 6:00 am GMT
<Well, umm sorry, but I am not exactly quite as much of a Puritan when it comes to these kinds of matters as some, and I do not believe that somehow seeing the language in a few of my posts here is somehow going to permanently damage children. >

Nobody is talking about damaging children, Travis, but if a younger, NNES, begins copying your use of abusive language, he/she may get into trouble. So, all you have to do is, like most of us, control your expletives. It's not much to ask, is it?
M56   Wed Apr 26, 2006 6:29 am GMT
<Rather, this is a direct continuation of the Middle English subjunctive, with the primary differences between the two being a reduced number of cases where actual distinctions between the indicative and subjunctive are made, primarily via changes in the conjugation of verbs in the indicative. >

Do we have the prescriptivists Travis surfacing? LOL!

Is it true that just because something derives from previously-existing form, it still functions in the same syntactic way?

"Syntactic" is important there.
position   Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:39 am GMT
Is it incorrect to use "If I was you..." instead of "If I were you..."? I hear the former much more often.
Travis   Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:52 am GMT
>>Do we have the prescriptivists Travis surfacing? LOL!<<

Because I am invoking historical forms and continuity with such in present forms in many dialects to place the burden of proof on you makes me a prescriptivist somehow? To prescribe would require me to say that something *should* be so in some fashion, which I was not doing.

>>Is it true that just because something derives from previously-existing form, it still functions in the same syntactic way?<<

As stated above, though, it does not actually act in quite the same manner; similar manner same manner does not make.

Anyways, with the claim that the subjunctive in English today somehow is just due to deleted modals, the burden of proof is on you. Show that such is so, rather than just claiming it.

Of course, you are most likely going to resort to purely synchronic analysis and say that history does not matter here, and claim that somehow such is syntactically the same underneath it all at the deep structure level.

Of course, from a diachronic standpoint there clearly never were any deleted modals to begin with but rather full continuity of subjunctive forms from at least Common West Germanic, if not Common Germanic. Consider the similarities between the Late Modern English subjunctive and even the Old English subjunctive, and between the Old English subjunctive and the Old High German subjunctive (in particular the similarity between both their third singular present indicative and third present singular subjunctive).

Anyways, if you are going to say anything other than some variation upon such a purely synchronic deep structure-oriented view, please explain.
Travis   Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:59 am GMT
>>Is it incorrect to use "If I was you..." instead of "If I were you..."? I hear the former much more often.<<

How frequently you hear the two depends primarily on where you are, as much of this is dialect-dependent.

But as for the ungrammaticality of the former in dialects that primarily that use the latter, I would not say it is specifically ungrammatical, but the range of cases where one would find it would be more limited and would probably have a different tone, and it would likely sound somewhat off in cases where "were" would be expected.

For example around here, one would normally use "were" in such cases, and if one did use "was", it would likely be for the purposes of specifically emphasing pastness, as "were" does not really indicate any actual time per se in and of itself here. For example, "If I was there at that time" is more like "If I had been there at that time" in its strongly marking past tense semantically, unlike "If I were there at that time", which is practically timeless in and of itself.
Damian auf Schottland   Wed Apr 26, 2006 8:00 am GMT
***<<Kirk : kannst du das auf englisch übersetzen, bitte ?>>

Haha, natürlich: ***


Danke sehr! / Cheers!
M56   Wed Apr 26, 2006 9:39 am GMT
<Of course, you are most likely going to resort to purely synchronic analysis and say that history does not matter here, and claim that somehow such is syntactically the same underneath it all at the deep structure level. >

You are a bit of a bore at times, Clive. I've written numerous papers with both synronic and diachronic viewpoints.