From: nee1@quads.uchicago.edu (barbara helen need)
Subject: Re: The subjunctive
Reply-To: nee1@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 12:14:09 GMT

Several people have responded to my statement that English does not
have a (morphological) subjunctive. I am responding on alt.usage.english
because subjunctive is one of those terms that people interested in
the usage of English seem to be very fond of and I wish to clarify my
remarks.

In article <4909@sersun1.essex.ac.uk>, <ysoj@solb1.essex.ac.uk (Tyson J R)>
notes that forms of the type

	If I were you...
	I wish he were here

are problems for my analysis. Let me explain. I have said that there is
no morphological class called the subjunctive. I stand by that. However,
the English language has to find some way to express the semantics or the
pragmatics of the subjunctive (the illocutionary effect). I would say
it has done it syntacticly with, in certain very specific syntactic environ-
ments, the past form which is unmarked for person and number (i.e. were). It
is the interaction of ALL PARTS of the grammar which make such utterances
"subjunctive".

In article <92221.172202HERSCH@auvm.american.edu>, <HERSCH@auvm.american.edu>
comments that "you offer no rationale for considering morphology the primary consideration in a discussion of verbal mood." Well, I don't know of a better
place to discuss VERBAL MOOD than morphology. Mood is a verbal category
express by the morphology of the language. If the morphology does not, or
cannot express the category, the semantics/pragmatics of the category
must be expressed elsewhere in the grammar. Would you claim that English
has an ablative case just because Latin does? Older grammars of English did.
The problem with the subjunctive is two-fold. Other European languages
still have the subjunctive and we have certain forms which translate
those (are modal verbs subjunctives? I say not) and there are fossils
of the old system still present in the language (however, you would not
claim that the genitive can have zero marking in the singular just because
we have Lady bug (which is a fossilized genitive) or that the genitive
plural of _foot_ is _foot_ because of the fossilized 6-foot board). I recog-
nize that people describing a language can get trapped into using traditional
terms to describe languages they do not apply to--I have to struggle with
it all the time, but languages must be described as they are--not as some
other language is, nor as the speakers would prefer that it be describe
[described] due to some notion of the perfection of some other language
(in the case of English, Latin).

In the same article, <HERSCH@auvm.american.edu> makes the following comment:

quote:
Very well then, in German, the (traditional, quaint) feminine singular
dative cannot be so called, because, *when looked at in isolation*,
_der_ "feminine singular dative" is indistinguishable from "der"
masculine singular nominative. This is a blessing, because German
grammar is too damned complicated. Are you willing to push your
argument so far? If not, it seems not to be impartially applicable.

For the matter of that, where on earth do you get this "2nd person
singular" that you refer to? Show me its morphological existence!
end of quote.

First of all, the second part of this (with respect to 2nd sing), I did
say above that I get trapped by traditional terminology at times. However,
one thing I have not discussed is paradigmatic issues. What I have been
arguing so far deals with syntagmatic variation, that is if two sentences
mean different things, the difference must lie in the differences. That is
if
	He was coming
and	If he were coming
mean different things then we have to look at the differences between
the sentences (clauses). Now I know that people will say, aha the difference
is was in one sentence and were in the other. But that is not the only
difference. The second has IF as well, and it is the use of IF AND WERE where
the meaning difference lies (consider (if) he had gone, where the ONLY
difference is the IF).

German then has a feminine dative singular because the catagories feminine
dative and singular are all identifiable elsewhere in the grammar. Feminines
are distinct from neuters and masculines, datives from genitive and the
other cases, singular from plural. By the same token, English has a
second person singular (as a cell in a pardigmatic chart). The form
itself YOU is unmarked for number (though there are speakers for whom
it is a singular only).

Barbara Need

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