Grammer a Week 14: Subjunctive Mood · 8:33pm Feb 14th, 2016
This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I soapbox about a grammar subject I find interesting. You might, too! This week's installment is about the subjunctive mood. The obvious question to ask is "what is subjunctive?" Because if you were brought up in an American high school, like I was, you probably weren't aware there was such thing as a subjunctive until you learned it in French or Spanish class first. Il faut que vous sachiez le subjonctif!
The subjunctive mood
First off, let's clear up what we're talking about. The subjunctive is used when describing hypothetical or conditional situations or when expressing necessity or hopes. Because the subjunctive is used in situations that depend on how you want to convey information and is not dependent on the time in which you say it, the subjunctive is referred to as a mood and not a tense. The reason you might not be aware of it is because it often slips under the radar in English; most verbs conjugated in the subjunctive mood look identical to other more familiar forms. There is, however, one example you've probably heard of before:
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Rainbow Dash warned.
It's a pretty commonly used phrase, and it's actually in the subjunctive mood. The word "if" introduces the entire situation as hypothetical, and the subsequent verb is thus conjugated in the subjunctive, with "were" instead of "was" as it would appear in the indicative.* And yes, if you phrase it with the indicative "was," it is, in fact, incorrect.
Here's another example that's also conjugated in the subjunctive; it might appear slightly formal.
"Where is she?" Prim Hemline shouted. "I insist that she be here soon."
Here, Prim Hemline is expressing necessity (that Rarity be here), so the next verb is conjugated in the subjunctive. There are a lot of phrases in this vein that can introduce the subjunctive in this way.
Subjunctive tenses
As a mood, subjunctive can be combined with tenses. Too bad tenses in subjunctive are incredibly confusing and don't work the same way as in the indicative. You'll generally see present subjunctive with reference to statements of hopefulness or necessity.
"Now that your friend is here, it is essential that she stay for the whole concert," the bouncer said to Octavia.†
What makes this "tense" confusing is situations like this:
"Where was she?" Octavia accosted. "I thought you told her that it was necessary that she stay for the whole concert!"
This example is referring to a past situation, but in this instance, you would still use the present subjunctive. Subjunctive generally refers to hypothetical and unreal situations, meaning whether they happened or didn't (or have yet to happen), it's conjugated the same in the subjunctive.
For the record, the past subjunctive does exist. It looks like this:
"I wish you came," Octavia lamented.
This is why subjunctive in English can be so confusing. This form of the subjunctive is frequently indistinguishable from the indicative form. Most forms of past subjunctive aren't even acknowledged as such because of this. In fact, the only verb in past subjunctive that looks different from its simple past form is "to be" (as in the very first example).
Also note that Octavia is expressing a current wish but is using the past subjunctive. Confusing, I know. Just remember that subjunctive tenses only resemble their indicative forms; they're not always used in the same time frames. There also exists a past perfect subjunctive tense, but I'm just gonna stop here. It's more work than it's worth to explain, and I've probably confused you enough.‡
* The indicative mood is what most writing is in, and this is the mood you're most familiar with. I'm indicating something in this sentence, so it's in the indicative mood.
† In British English, it's acceptable to replace the present subjunctive with the modal "should" followed by the indicative. In this example, "Now that she is here, it is essential that she should stay for the whole concert." Alternatively, sometimes the simple past is used instead, e.g. "Now that she is here, it is essential that she stayed for the whole concert."
‡ But for the record, it looks exactly like past perfect indicative.
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions or comments, please post them below. I'm always open to suggestions for future Grammer a Week posts.
British English is a bit of a mess when it comes to the subjunctive, to be honest. It's on the verge of dying out, but it never quite seems to get there. My usual example is this; emphasis added by me:
That's okay in informal British English, and increasingly even in semi-formal language. Using "go" instead of "went" there comes across as overly stiff in many contexts, though it's still correct. The main reason the subjunctive hasn't died out is that we read so much American English online these days.
3754132
Blagh. Well, English is a mongrel of a language, so it's always messy. In American, at least, using the simple past in place of subjunctive is acceptable in everyday speech (just as using who in place of whom is), and it's seen as formally correct in written prose. And then, of course, you can make English sound more old-fashioned by adding even more subjunctive mood!
Wow, I didn't realize wishes and hypotheticals and stuff had their own rules like this! It's kinda cool! I always sort of looked at the wish being described as something separate from the time the wish maker is in something like "It was imperative she stay for the whole concert" to explain it to myself. Like, "imperative she stay for the whole concert" is the thing, uh, the "noun" type thing, and "it was" is the verb part... Clearly that's not quite correct but it did usually result in me arriving at the correct way to write my sentences so I guess it's not all bad. I'm glad to learn the correct way to understand this, though.
3756615 Yeah. A lot of this stuff is understood intuitively through osmosis, but I feel it's still useful to understand the mechanism behind it. Saves you from being confused by novel situations or explaining how something is right by saying, "Well, it just feels right."
3759881
Exactly!