"God bless you"

Guest   Sat Aug 11, 2007 2:09 am GMT
Why do people say "God bless you"? Shouldn't that be "God blesses you"?
Earle   Sat Aug 11, 2007 2:30 am GMT
Always regarded it as a prayer, so it's an imperative, or similar. It used to be more commonly "May God bless you."
M56   Sat Aug 11, 2007 5:00 am GMT
Earle's right, the "may", or even the "may God", is omitted on occasion.
Travis   Sat Aug 11, 2007 5:33 am GMT
It's a frozen subjunctive form, actually, where the subjunctive is being used as a sort of third person imperative. Its present equivalent would roughly be "may God bless you", but it is *not* "may God bless you" with "may" omitted.
Travis   Sat Aug 11, 2007 5:36 am GMT
Also, why it is "bless" rather than "blesses" is that the present subjunctive in English does not use the "-(e)s" ending in the third person singular.
M56   Sat Aug 11, 2007 7:46 am GMT
<Its present equivalent would roughly be "may God bless you", but it is *not* "may God bless you" with "may" omitted. >

And how do you know that?

"It is a very old expression, and to my ear it is an example of the "subjunctive", which is all but dead in modern English. The expression is short for "May God bless you", or "Would that God bless you".

Note the "short for".
Travis   Sat Aug 11, 2007 8:20 am GMT
>><Its present equivalent would roughly be "may God bless you", but it is *not* "may God bless you" with "may" omitted. >

And how do you know that?<<

I know this because it is but one of a range of phrase of frozen phrases, such as "God save the Queen/King" which use the standalone present subjunctive. One should remember that the standalone present subjunctive was historically productive in English but which today is limited to frozen phrases even in the English dialects which largely preserve the subjunctive. Also one should compare such phrases with similar German phrases like "Gott sei Dank" and "Gott sei mit uns", which are clearly present subjunctive and which are similar in both construction and meaning.

(By "standalone present subjunctive" I mean the use of the present subjunctive in main clauses, as opposed to the modern usage of the present subjunctive, which is only really productive in subordinate and relative clauses. In most places where the standalone present subjunctive was historically used in English modal verbs such as "would", "may", and "might" are used in English dialects today.)

>>"It is a very old expression, and to my ear it is an example of the "subjunctive", which is all but dead in modern English. The expression is short for "May God bless you", or "Would that God bless you".

Note the "short for".<<

Sorry, but the death of the subjunctive is very greatly exaggerated. It may be dead in your dialect, but that does not mean that it has been lost in all English dialects. Actually, in most North American English dialects, both the present subjunctive and the past subjunctive are productive in even everyday speech, even if their range of use is more limited than in the past or in formal registers. And note that the subjunctive is still morphologically marked, particularly with the verb "to be" and with normal verbs in the third person singular in the case of the present subjunctive. Furthermore, particularly in formal language, subjunctive uses of "have" and modal verbs are preserved even if they are not morphologically marked.
Tommy   Sat Aug 11, 2007 9:34 am GMT
<Sorry, but the death of the subjunctive is very greatly exaggerated. It may be dead in your dialect, but that does not mean that it has been lost in all English dialects. >

So, can we say that "may" is often omitted outside the USA?
furrykef   Sat Aug 11, 2007 10:08 am GMT
<<
Sorry, but the death of the subjunctive is very greatly exaggerated. >>

I agree. I use the subjunctive in English all the time. Phrases like "I wish I was" grate on my ears. Likewise, in my speech, phrases like "I demand that..." can only be followed by the present subjunctive. Nobody ever points out that my use of the subjunctive sounds weird or archaic.

There are some cases where I prefer the indicative, though... I generally say "whether or not it's true" rather than "whether or not it be true", which usually sounds too formal to me.

<<<< <Sorry, but the death of the subjunctive is very greatly exaggerated. It may be dead in your dialect, but that does not mean that it has been lost in all English dialects. >>>>

<< So, can we say that "may" is often omitted outside the USA? >>

I'm not sure where you're getting this idea from... the statement you quoted has nothing to do with either the omission of "may", nor are specific countries mentioned. In a statement such as "May the force be with you", the word "be" is still in the subjunctive; it's just not a "bare" subjunctive.

- Kef
Travis   Sat Aug 11, 2007 1:09 pm GMT
>>In a statement such as "May the force be with you", the word "be" is still in the subjunctive; it's just not a "bare" subjunctive.<<

Actually, the "be" here is an infinitive, rather than the present subjunctive. It would be present subjunctive, however, if you said "The force be with you".
furrykef   Sat Aug 11, 2007 1:29 pm GMT
Hmm. Is "the force" the subject of "may" or of "be"? I guess "may" needs a subject, so it would be the subject of "may", and "be" would have no subject, making it an infinitive after all. It clearly is an infinitive in "The force may be with you", although the meaning of that sentence is entirely different.

- Kef
Travis   Sat Aug 11, 2007 1:50 pm GMT
I myself am not sure about how one is to analyze such "may ..." sentences, as "may the force be with you" is clearly different from "the force may be with you"; the usage difference seems that "may" in the first is present subjunctive and in the second is present indicative, despite no difference in marking. The first could not be imperative because imperatives cannot take subjects in present-day English (even they actually could take them historically, like one can say things like "gehen wir da" in German today). As for the word order, that likely is a fixed usage for this particular case.

One could try to make a different analysis, though, that it indeed is imperative and "the force be with you" is a complex object, but "may" does not allow complex objects under normal circumstances and furthermore the case usage does not correspond with the presence of a complex object; one can say things like "may he go away" whereas if it used a complex object it should be *"may him go away", like "see him go away" or "let him go away".
Native Korean   Sat Aug 11, 2007 2:37 pm GMT
"God bless you!" is an optative sentence.
That's why people don't say "God blesses you."
Just memorize it!
Guest   Sat Aug 11, 2007 3:04 pm GMT
>>"God bless you!" is an optative sentence.<<

The thing is that English does not have a separate optative mood from its subjunctive mood, and this is just a particular use of the subjunctive mood in English in an optative fashion.
Cranky   Sat Aug 11, 2007 3:13 pm GMT
Just to clarify, "Bless you" doesn’t imply anything. The statement, in just grammar, means that you’re the one blessing the person, and not God. Saying God Bless You does mean you want God to bless the person, and that I have a problem with.