English subjunctive#Distinguishing from past indicative after if

The English subjunctive is realized as a finite but tenseless clause. Subjunctive clauses use a bare or plain verb form, which lacks any inflection. For instance, a subjunctive clause would use the verb form "be" rather than "am/is/are" and "arrive" rather than "arrives", regardless of the person and number of the subject.Rodney Huddleston. "The verb." Pp. 77–78, 83, 87–88. Chapter 3 of {{Harv|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}.

: (1) Subjunctive clauses:

:: a. It's crucial that he be here by noon

:: b. It's vital that he arrive on time

English does not have a distinct subjunctive verb form, since the bare verb form is not exclusively subjunctive. It is also used in other constructions, such as imperatives and infinitivals.Rodney Huddleston. "The verb." Pp. 77, 83. Chapter 3 of {{Harv|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}.

: (2) Imperative:

:: a. Be here by noon!

:: b. Arrive on time!

For almost all verbs, the bare form is syncretic with the present tense form used in all persons except the third person singular.Rodney Huddleston. "The verb." Pp. 84–85. Chapter 3 of {{Harv|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}.

: (3) Present indicative: I always arrive on time.

One exception to this generalization is the defective verb beware, which has no indicative form.Sylvia Chalker, Edmund Weiner, The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994; {{ISBN|978-0-19-861242-1}}), p. 105. Another is be, whose bare form is not syncretic with any of its indicative forms:Rodney Huddleston. "The verb." P. 77. Chapter 3 of {{Harv|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}.

: (4) Present indicative:

:: a. I am…

:: b. She is…

:: c. You/we/they are…

Subjunctive clauses are considered finite since they have obligatory subjects, alternate with tensed forms, and are often introduced by the complementizer that.Rodney Huddleston. "The verb." P. 90. Chapter 3 of {{Harv|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}.

Subjunctive clauses most commonly appear as clausal complements of non-veridical operators. The most common use of the English subjunctive is the mandative or jussive subjunctive,Quirk, Randolph; Greenbaum, Sidney; Leech, Geoffrey; Svartik, Jan (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Longman. {{ISBN|0-582-51734-6}}. which is optionally used in the clausal complements of some predicates whose meanings involve obligation.Rodney Huddleston. "Content clauses and reported speech." Pp. 995–996. Chapter 11 of {{Harv|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}.

: (5) Mandative subjunctive:

:: a. I insist that he leave us alone. (instead of "leaves us")

:: b. I would rather someone else do it. ("does it")

:: c. We demand that it be done tomorrow. ("is done")

:: d. My recommendation is that they not be punished. ("are not punished"; note that the parallel word order "that they be not punished" was formerly standard but is now archaic, as in "Their hands shall be weakened from the work, that it be not done" from the King James Bible.)

The following pair illustrates the semantic contribution of the subjunctive mandative. The subjunctive example unambiguously expresses a desire for a future situation, whereas the non-subjunctive (indicative) example is potentially ambiguous, either (i) expressing a desire to change the addressee's beliefs about the current situation, or (ii) as a "covert mandative", having the same meaning as the subjunctive mandative.Rodney Huddleston. "Content clauses and reported speech." Pp. 995–999. Chapter 11 of {{Harv|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}.

: (6) Subjunctive mandative compared:

:: a. Subjunctive mandative: I insist that Andrea be here.

:: b. Indicative (whether non-mandative or covert mandative): I insist that Andrea is here.

The subjunctive is thus not the only means of marking an embedded clause as mandative: examples can be ambiguous between mandative and non-mandative interpretations, and dialects vary in their use of the subjunctive. In particular, the subjunctive is more widely used in American English than in British English.{{efn|For more on the increasing use of the mandative subjunctive in British English as influenced by American English, see §3.59 in Quirk, Randolph; Greenbaum, Sidney; Leech, Geoffrey; Svartik, Jan (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Longman. {{ISBN|0-582-51734-6}}.}} (The covert mandative is very unusual in American English.Rodney Huddleston. "Content clauses and reported speech." P. 995. Chapter 11 of {{Harv|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}.Göran Kjellmer, "The revived subjunctive", p. 250; chap. 13 of {{Harv|Rohdenburg|Schlüter|2009}}.)

Use of the subjunctive mandative increased during the 20th century in American, British, and Australian English.Göran Kjellmer, "The revived subjunctive", p. 246–256; chap. 13 of {{Harv|Rohdenburg|Schlüter|2009}}.William J. Crawford, "The mandative subjunctive", p. 257–276; chap. 14 of {{Harv|Rohdenburg|Schlüter|2009}}.Pam Peters, "The survival of the subjunctive: Evidence of its use in Australia and elsewhere," English World-Wide 19 (1998): 87–103. {{doi|10.1075/eww.19.1.06pet}}.

The subjunctive is occasionally found in clauses expressing a probable condition, such as If I be found guilty… (more common is am or should be; for more information see English conditional sentences). This usage is mostly old-fashioned or formal,Anita Mittwoch, Rodney Huddleston and Peter Collins. "The clause: Adjuncts." Pp. 745. Chapter 8 of {{Harv|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}. although it is found in some common fixed expressions such as if need be.Renaat Declerck, Susan Reed. Conditionals: A Comprehensive Empirical Analysis. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001. {{ISBN|9783110171440}}). P. 197.

Somewhat more common is the use after whether in the exhaustive conditional construction: "He must be tended with the same care, whether he be friend or foe."Geneva Convention no. I of August 12, 1949, for the amelioration of the condition of the wounded and sick in armed forces in the field, chapter 2. In The Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949: Analysis for the use of National Red Cross Societies (Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross, 1950), vol. 1, p. 4. In both of these uses, it is possible to invert subject and verb and omit the subordinator. Analogous uses are occasionally found after other words, such as unless, until, whoever, wherever:

:(7)

:: a. Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us.Abraham Lincoln, Cooper Union speech, 1860.

:: b. Whoever he be, he shall not go unpunished.George M. Jones, L. E. Horning, and John D. Morrow. A High School English Grammar. Toronto and London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1922. P. 133 (exercise 86, item 11).

In most of the above examples a construction with should can be used as an alternative: "I insist that he should leave now" etc. This "should mandative" was the most common kind of mandative at the start of the 20th century, not only in British English but also in American English. However, in American English its use decreased rapidly in the early 20th century and it had become very unusual by the 21st; in British English its use also decreased, but later and not so drastically.Göran Kjellmer, "The revived subjunctive", p. 247; chap. 13 of {{Harv|Rohdenburg|Schlüter|2009}}. Kjellmer cites Gerd Övergaard, The Mandative Subjunctive in American and British English in the 20th Century Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia, 94 (Uppsala: Academiae Upsaliensis, 1995; {{ISBN|9789155436766}}).

The subjunctive is not generally used after verbs such as hope and expect.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}}

The subjunctive can also be used in clauses with the conjunction lest, which generally expresses a potential adverse event:Rodney Huddleston. "Content clauses and reported speech." P. 1000. Chapter 11 of {{Harv|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}.

:(8)

:: a. I am running faster lest she catch me (i.e., "in order that she not catch me")

:: b. I was worried lest she catch me (i.e., "that she might catch me")

Subjunctive clauses can occasionally occur unembedded, with the force of a wish or a third person imperative (and such forms can alternatively be analyzed as imperatives). This is most common nowadays in formulaic remnants of archaic optative constructions, such as "(God) bless you", "God save the King", "heaven forbid", "peace be with you" (any of which can instead start with may: "May God bless you", etc.);{{efn|An example is America, America, God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood (from "America the Beautiful"). Similarly, the traditional English text of the Aaronic blessing is cast entirely in the subjunctive, with jussive force: The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make His face to shine upon thee. The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee and give thee peace.}} "long live…"; "truth be told", "so be it", "suffice it to say", "woe betide…", and more.Rodney Huddleston. "Clause type and illocutionary force." P. 944. Chapter 10 of {{Harv|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}.

The term "subjunctive" has been extended to other grammatical phenomena in English which do not comprise a natural class. Traditional grammars of English sometimes apply the term to verb forms used in subjunctive clauses, regardless of their other uses.Rodney Huddleston. "The verb." P. 83. Chapter 3 of {{Harv|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}. Some traditional grammars refer to non-factual instances of irrealis "were" as "past subjunctives".Rodney Huddleston. "The verb." Pp. 87–88. Chapter 3 of {{Harv|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}.{{cite news |last=Pullum |first=Geoff |date=9 March 2016 |title=Being a Subjunctive |url=http://cola.calpoly.edu/~bkennell/Subjunctive.pdf |work=Chronicle of Higher Education |access-date=19 September 2020 |archive-date=6 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210306083144/http://cola.calpoly.edu/~bkennell/Subjunctive.pdf |url-status=dead }} So do modern descriptive grammars, while noting that the "past" is misleading as it does not correspond to tense, using the traditionalist term only to differentiate it from the "present subjunctive" discussed in this article.{{Cite book |last=Declerck |first=Renaat |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/226376796 |title=The grammar of the English tense system: a comprehensive analysis |date=2006 |publisher=Mouton de Gruyter |others=Susan Reed, Bert Cappelle |isbn=3-11-018589-X |location=Berlin |oclc=226376796}} The term "subjunctive" is sometimes extended further to describe any grammatical reflection of modal remoteness or counterfactuality. For instance, conditionals with a counterfactual or modally remote meaning are sometimes referred to as "counterfactual conditionals", even by those who acknowledge it as a misnomer.See for instance:

• "Because subjunctive and indicative are the terms used in the philosophical literature on conditionals and because we will refer to that literature in the course of this paper, I have decided to keep these terms in the present discussion ... however, it would be wrong to believe that mood choice is a necessary component of the semantic contrast between indicative and subjunctive conditionals". Michela Ippolito. "[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e68d/612d7a93c98956e7314e0d131d90244c31f2.pdf On the Semantic Composition of Subjunctive Conditionals]" (PDF). 2002.
• "The terminology is of course linguistically inept ([since] the morphological marking is one of tense and aspect, not of indicative vs. subjunctive mood), but it is so deeply entrenched that it would be foolish not to use it." Kai von Fintel, "[http://web.mit.edu/fintel/fintel-2011-hsk-conditionals.pdf Conditionals]" (PDF); chapter 59 of Klaus von Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn and Paul Portner (eds.), Semantics: An international handbook of meaning, vol. 2 (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 33.2), pp. 1515–1538. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter Mouton. {{doi|10.1515/9783110255072.1515}}.
• "the use of past tense to indicate unreality, as is done in English, is common crosslinguistically, and it is a mistake to confuse this correlation of form and function with the subjunctive mood." Paul Portner. Modality. Oxford Surveys in Semantics and Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. {{ISBN|9780199292431}}. The English subjunctive is the subject of many common misconceptions, such as that it is a tense, that its use is decreasing when it is in fact increasing, and that it is necessary or sufficient for counterfactuality in conditionals.{{cite web|url= http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001148.html|title= Prescriptivism and Ignorance: Together Again|first= Mark|last= Liberman|author-link= Mark Liberman|date=July 1, 2004|website= Language Log|access-date= September 20, 2020}}Rodney Huddleston. "Content clauses and reported speech." Pp. 999–1000. Chapter 11 of {{Harv|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}.von Fintel, Kai; Iatridou, Sabine (2020). [https://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/zdjYTJjY/fintel-iatridou-2020-x.pdf Prolegomena to a Theory of X-Marking] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200715025503/https://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/zdjYTJjY/fintel-iatridou-2020-x.pdf |date=2020-07-15 }}. Manuscript.{{cite journal |last1=Iatridou |first1=Sabine |date=2000 |title=The grammatical ingredients of counterfactuality |journal= Linguistic Inquiry |volume=31 |issue = 2|pages=231–270|doi=10.1162/002438900554352 |s2cid=57570935 |url=http://lingphil.mit.edu/papers/iatridou/counterfactuality.pdf}} Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Geoff Pullum argued that mention of the subjunctive is often used as a status symbol:

Virtually none of the things people believe about the subjunctive or its status in English are true. Most purists who witter on about it couldn’t actually pass a test on distinguishing subjunctive from nonsubjunctive clauses to save their sorry asterisks. But then they don’t have to: Merely mentioning the subjunctive approvingly and urging that it be taught is enough to establish one’s credentials as a better class of person.

{{See|Old English subjunctive}}

Old English had a morphological subjunctive, which was lost by the time of Early Modern English like Shakespeare.The Cambridge history of the English language. Richard M. Hogg, Roger Lass, Norman Francis Blake, Suzanne Romaine, R. W. Burchfield, John Algeo. (2000). The syntactic subjunctive of Modern English was more widely used in the past than it is today.Stein, Dieter. "The expression of deontic and epistemic modality and the subjunctive: ". Studies in Early Modern English, edited by Dieter Kastovsky, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011, pp. 403-412. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110879599.403

Examples of subjunctive uses in archaic modern English:

• I will not let thee go, except [=unless] thou bless me. (King James Bible, Genesis 32:26)
• Murder, though it have no tongue, will speak. (Shakespeare, Hamlet)

Older forms of modern English also make greater use of subject–auxiliary inversion in subjunctive clauses:

• Should you feel hungry, … (equivalent to If you (should) feel hungry)
• Be he called on by God, … (equivalent to "If he be (i.e. If he is) called on by God, …")
• Be they friend or foe, … (equivalent to "(No matter) whether they be friend or foe, …")
• Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home (from "Home! Sweet Home!"; meaning "even though")

Some examples of this sort survive in common usage as set expressions:

• "come what may"{{Sfn| Merriam-Webster|2002}}
• "God forbid"{{Sfn|Fowler|2015}}
• "so be it"{{Sfn|Merriam-Webster|2002}}{{Sfn|Fowler|2015}}
• "so help me God"{{Sfn|Fowler|2015}}
• "be that as it may"{{Sfn| Merriam-Webster|2002}}{{Sfn|Fowler|2015}}

• Habitual be

{{Notelist}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{Cite book|last1=Fowler |first1=H.W. |editor1-last=Butterfield |editor1-first=Jeremy |title= Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage |date=2015 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-966135-0}}
• {{Cite book|last1=Huddleston |first1=Rodney |authorlink1=Rodney Huddleston|last2= Pullum |first2= Geoffrey K.|authorlink2=Geoffrey Pullum |title=The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language |date=2002 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge; New York |isbn=0-521-43146-8 }}
• {{Cite book | editor1-last=Rohdenburg | editor1-first=Günter | editor2-last=Schlüter | editor2-first=Julia | title=One Language, Two Grammars? Differences between British and American English | location=Cambridge | publisher=Cambridge University Press | date=2009 | isbn=978-0-521-87219-5 }}
• {{Cite book | title = Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage | date = 2002 | publisher = Penguin | isbn = 9780877796336 | ref = {{SfnRef| Merriam-Webster|2002}} | url = https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780877796336 }}

{{DEFAULTSORT:English Subjunctive}}

Category:Grammatical moods

Subjunctive