It is time the minister acted...

Question

It is time the minister acted on the crisis in education.Is the sentence above grammatical?Is "acted" a subjunctive in that sentence?----------------If the sentence is grammatical, then, in my opinion, "acted" is the subjunctive form of the verb in such a clause.

GPY · Accepted Answer

tkacka15Is the sentence above grammatical?

Yes.

tkacka15Is "acted" a subjunctive in that sentence?

Some people call it a past subjunctive, yes. Some people also use the term "unreal past".

CalifJim · Answer

tkacka15If the sentence is grammatical, then, in my opinion, "acted" is the subjunctive form of the verb in such a clause.

The test of this is to look for examples with the verb be.

If we find a substantial number of examples of "It's time I were" and "It's time he were", then the subjunctive is at work.

If instead we find all or almost all our examples are "It's time I was" and "It's time he was", then we're talking only about the indicative simple past.

See the following link. Click on "Search lots of books".

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=it%27s+time+I+were%2Cit%27s+time+I+was%2Cit%27s+time+he+were%2Cit%27s+time+he+was&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cit%20%27s%20time%20I%20was%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cit%20%27s%20time%20he%20was%3B%2Cc0

CJ

CalifJim · Answer

tkacka15Is "acted" a subjunctive in that sentence?

I find this a thought-provoking question. Because English does not mark the past subjunctive in any special way, we are left with the implication that "subjunctive" is not a form but a feeling.

From the point of view of generating grammatically correct sentences with "It is time", the distinction between indicative and subjunctive has no effect at all. Whether we say "Use the past subjunctive after 'It's time'" or "Use the past indicative after 'It's time'", the written or spoken form comes out the same. So is the only difference the feeling? I suppose it is.

So if we say "Use the past subjunctive after 'It's time'", we are exhorting the student to feel a certain way about the clause after "It's time". Presumably the student who doesn't feel the "subjunctiveness" of that clause is forming an ungrammatical sentence.

Maybe the original question Is "acted" a subjunctive in that sentence? should be Should we feel subjunctiveness connected to "acted" in that sentence?

What are we to make of this?

CJ

It is time the minister acted...

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