COMPLETION REPORTThe Subjunctive Mood in Japanese and Korean Englishes across Time: Is There Diachronic Change in theGrammar of Expanding Circle Englishes?
Dr.Ariane Macalinga Borlongan （+1）
Assistant Professor
Dept. of English and Applied Linguistics
De La Salle University
The subjunctive mood has been a developmentally interesting realization in the English grammatical category ofmood. With the language’s general shift from a primarily synthetic to presently primarily analytic language, Old
English’s ability to morphosyntactically realize the subjunctive has significantly disappeared, as modality has
primarily been realized through modals and other expressions, with the morphologically-dictated subjunctive
reduced to a few construction types.
The present analysis provides a diachronic account of the use of the subjunctive mood in Japanese andKorean Englishes. The present study is the first of its kind that takes the analysis of this developmentallyinteresting verbal category – the subjunctive mood – in the Expanding Circle Englishes and using the lens ofdiachrony. The study is based on an analysis of a 250,000-word purposely-compiled corpora of newspapers
written in the two Englishes in question between 1970s and 2000s.
The mandative subjunctive after suasive expressions is stable in Japanese English within the four-decade
period while its modal alternatives have decreased, with should being completely unattested at the turn of themillenium. Meanwhile, Korean English records almost a three-quarter increase in the use of the mandative
subjunctive. While should also disappears at the turn of the century in Korean English, other modal alternatives
remain strong in 2000s. Hypothetical subjunctives in Korean English have vanished within the four-decade period
though the frequency of was has also decreased by almost half. Both were and was are not attested in the 2000s
data for Japanese English.
Leech, Hundt, Mair, and Smith (2009) say that American English is leading the revival of the mandative
subjunctive and Philippine English, being an American-lineage variety, follows such revival of the mandatesubjunctive and is, in fact, reviving the synthetic construction at a much faster rate than its parent (Collins,Borlongan, Lim, & Yao, 2014). A revival also seems to be observed in the two Expanding Circle Englishes, atwhich the mandative subjunctive has gained equal footing with the modal alternatives in the later years. Not muchcan be said about the (mis)fortunes of the hypothetical subjunctive, though it appears that the British-led decline inits use is also apparent in the Expanding Circle Englishes. As the revival of mandative subjunctives is more visible
than the decline of hypothetical subjunctives, the Expanding Circle patterns then stand closer to American patterns
than British ones, but this is still too much a generalization if the subjunctive were the only data at hand.
Finally, to answer the question posed by this study, whether there exists diachronic change in thegrammar of Expanding Circle Englishes: As far as the subjunctive mood is concerned, yes, indeed, there is. But it
is in much a state of dynamism as how Schneider (2014) describes Expanding Circle Englishes in his conceptionof transnational attraction.
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Publication of the Results of Research Project:
Verbal Presentation (Date, Venue, Name of Conference, Title of Presentation, Presenter, etc.)
May 25-29, 2016, Hong Kong, China, 37th International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English(ICAME) Conference, Documenting Change in Expanding Circle Englishes: The Case of East and Southeast
Asian Englishes, Ariane Macalinga Borlongan

Thesis (Name of Journal and its Date, Title and Author of Thesis, etc.)

Book (Publisher and Date of the Book, Title and Author of the Book, etc.)

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