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Paris zhao Posted 14 years ago
Grammar

Need an example of past subjunctive used in OE

Hi: The past subjunctive mood is confined to "were" in Modern english, as almost every grammar book says. And at the same time, we are taught that the past subjunctive forms are always the same as the past indicative plural form. That is to say, in OE or early modern english, we could find some examples of past subjunctive, which is not confined to "were". It's easy for me to find "were" examples, but hard to find the examples which are identifical in form with past tense but used as past subjunctive, and whose form is not "were".(badly constructed sentence, excuse me). Could you help me? One sentence is enough!
Thank you!
  

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5 Answers
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I wish I knew him better!
If only I had more free time!

CB
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Thank you! To confirm my understanding, in modern english, we don't interpret "knew" and "had" as subjunctive, but as past tense with modal meaning, past subjunctive, except "were", in modern british english, is dead, or out of usage, right?
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paris zhao Need an example of past subjunctive used in OE. Could you help me?
I hope you realize that Old English is not going to help you much in understanding modern English. Old English is completely unintelligible to speakers of modern English.

Nevertheless, here's a link that contains conjugations of several verbs in Old English, including th
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paris zhaoTo confirm my understanding, in modern english, we don't interpret "knew" and "had" as subjunctive,
I do. I don't want to start arguing about terminology, though. I find it utterly boring. There's little agreement anyway.

I didn't realize you wanted examples from Old English. CJ has given you a good link, so I don't need to give you examples
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Hi: CB, I appologize if I make you feel bored about my question. I really needed an example. Because English is not my first language, and subjunctive mood confuses me a lot, and I needed an example to help me understand what a unquestionable subjunctive sentence "look" like when the mood was popular in books. But I didn't realize that the sentence I needed is around me everywhere, modern english
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