Want to know more about conjunctive

Question

I would be interested to learn more about the English conjunctive mood. I know that it occurs in at least two tenses, present and imperfect. I know that in its present tense, verbs are exactly the same as their infinitves, i.e. "God have mercy with us!"

But what are the conjugating rules for imperfect conjunctive? I only know one example of it, "were", as in "If I were rich..." Was usage of conjunctive more common in older English, where people would apply its conjugating rules on just any verb which didn't necessarely have to be part of an already coined expression as in modern English? Are there yet other tenses of conjuntive besides the two I have mentioned that exist or have existed in English?

Paco2004 · Accepted Answer

Hellow Zewu

I'm an English learner from Japan. I am afraid I don't know much about English enough to answer such questions as those you are asking. But allow me to put my two cents worth.

First of all, let me define some grammatical terms. In English, people usually say 'subjunctive mood' for 'conjunctive mood' and 'past subjunctive' for 'imperfect conjunctive'.

Now your questions.
Basically English verbs have two tenses and three moods. The tenses are present and past, and the moods are indicative, subjunctive, and imperative. This basic frame of tense-mood relations has not changed through history. As you have already known well, in current English, the verb form for the present subjunctive is the same as the infinitive for all persons. The verb form for the past subjunctive is the same as that for the indicative past except in the case of 'be', whose past subjunctive is 'were' for all persons. One of the features of the subjunctive mood is that the verb form does not vary with persons, while the indicative mood does vary. This was true even in the Old English (the English before the Viking age), though there was a slight difference between singular and plural. The verb tellan (=tell), for example, conjugated as below.
(EX) tellan (to tell)
Ind/Pres (Sg) 1. telle 2. tellest 3. telleth (Pl) 1. tellath 2. tellast 3. tellath
Ind/Past (Sg) 1. tealde 2. tealdest 3. tealde (Pl) 1. tealdon 2. tealdon 3. tealdon
Sub/Pres (Sg) telle (for all person) (Pl) tellen (for all persons)
Sub/Past (Sg) tealde (for all person) (Pl) tealden (for all persons)
Imp/Pres (Sg) 2 tell (Pl) 2 tellath
Present Participle : tellende, Past Participle : getealde
In current English, the use of the subjunctive mood is very limited. It is used only in unreal conditional clauses and in some that-clauses that follows after certain verbs like 'demand', 'request', etc.. But in Old English, it was used much more frequently, since modal auxiliary verbs were yet to develop in Old English. For example, "He said that she were wise" was used in the sense of "He said that she would be wise" or "He said that she seemed to him wise". Finally, I would add one tip. In current English, past perfect tense is used sometimes in a way as if they were kind of past-past subjunctive, but this usage of perfect tense seems to have developed after the time of Chaucer.

If you would like to know more about this kind of stuff, please visit [url=http://www.ceafinney.com/subjunctive/index.html] here[/url], [url=http://www.engl.virginia.edu/OE/courses/handouts/Subjunctive.html] here[/url], and[url=http://members.tripod.com/babaev/archive/grammar43.html] here[/url].
paco

Anonymous · Answer

0Thanks, paco2004, for the information on the subjunctive in English.  You know more about it than 99% of English speakers.  No one understands the subjunctive in English because it is so subtle and complex, and the rules for using would, should, could, can, might and may are so subtle that even linguists are not sure.  English speakers simply use these conditional words because they know them from childhood, and they use them by "feel", and rarely use them incorrectly.  The subjunctive is dying in English, and I have seen it die slowly during the last half of the twentieth century, more and more.  Few people bother with it other than to use some of the common words mentioned above to specify various degrees of ability or non-ability.  Sometimes the older expressions which seem to use the subjunctive might actually be in a mood that is called the  "jussive mood" in latin grammar.  the jussive mood hasn't actually been defined for English grammar, but still it is (or was) there in some expressions ("Let there be light").  Many of the fossilized or idiomatic older expressions are subjunctive or jussive, but they survive just by sound and no longer by logic or by the rules of grammar, because nobody can figure them out!0-

Modern hat 842 · Answer

It is so exasperating to be continually reminded that foreigners know more about the use of our language than those who learned English from birth. Are we to put this down to the ever-decreasing amount of time Teachers have to teach the subject correctly because they are requested to cram in so many other subjects, or are we to accept that Teachers themselves do not understand all the rules, therefore are not able to teach correctly? This is most definitely not a question I raise lightly and I include an apology for my own written English standards.

Regards,

someone who loves their language and is constantly making time to improve.

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