Subjunctive Mood

[Sebaylias]

Me too!!!
I did English and linguistics majors - also specialising in English grammar but mostly Historical English Linguistics (Old and Middle English).
I left the literature behind for now and did a Masters in Applied Linguistics...
Aside from all that, I'm a part-time know-it-all :)

[JaneP]

Really? I'm not really in the know-it-all business:o) and how about you Mr Pedantic? Are you a fellow linguist?

[MrPedantic]

...The sentences you have provided are again different to the original. They all have a present tense, or present progressive...

Hello JaneP

That's not quite true. My sentences don't all use the present tense. They use:

1. I wish [present tense of "wish"] I had [simple past tense of "have"] a day off next week.

2. He said [simple past of "say"] he was working [past progressive of "work"] tomorrow.

3. If you took [simple past of "take"] the road on the right, you'd [modal "would"] get [bare infinitive of "get"] there much more quickly.

The present tense versions would be:

1a. *I wish I have a day off next week.
2a. He says he is working tomorrow.
3a. If you take the road on the right, you get there much more quickly.

MrP

[JaneP]

Regardless of other examples the original sentence is just not possible. There is no question. Yes, you can use the past tense to refer to future time or to create a sense of distance. You can also use it in conditional subjunctive clauses. But that doesn't change the fact that the original sentence is unacceptable. This is because the following situation is not yet possible:

He proposed (in the past sometime) that another meeting (not time specific) was held (sometime in the past) next week (he travelled into the future, attended the proposed meeting and came back to the past where his interlocutor was waiting and told him it happened next week :))

[MrPedantic]

On that basis, "I wish I had a day off next week" would also be "unacceptable":

"I wish [in the present] I had [some time in the past] a day off [not time specific] next week [I travelled into the future, etc., etc. :))

Which is obviously absurd.

But it's not my intention here to persuade you or anyone else to adopt unusual or non-standard structures. I would merely say that yes, this variant of the mandative subjunctive exists – in British English, at least; and yes, it's colloquial.

MrP

[JaneP]

Oh, and by the way, the sentence is not even a subjunctive let alone a mandative ...

[MrPedantic]

Hello JaneP

It may seem an odd thing to say. I'll explain my reasoning:

Ex. 1
He proposed that the meeting was held next week.

Propositions
1. The "mandative subjunctive" occurs after verbs such as "ask", "demand", "order", "suggest", "propose", "recommend", "urge", and "insist" when they are used to express a mild to strong demand/request. (Thus after "ask" only in its sense of "request", rather than "enquire"; e.g. "she asked that he consider her arguments carefully".)

2. A past tense form is often used to express the subjunctive mood in hypothetical statements, e.g. "took" in "If you took this road, you'd get there more quickly".

Note that this "took" doesn't express literal "past time"; rather, it expresses "remoteness", "deference", etc. (Some would argue that this past tense form in the protasis/if-clause is a direct descendant of the Old/Middle English past subjunctive.)

3. "Was held" is a past tense form.

Hypothesis
The past tense form sometimes arises in the that-clause of mandative utterances with future scope because the speaker:

a) has a sense that the structure requires a subjunctive mood;
b) is uncomfortable with the present subjunctive in certain contexts;
c) is accustomed to using a past tense form in other contexts to express the subjunctive mood.

Add to this the fact that the past tense form is often used in indirect speech with a future connotation, and we have an easy pathway to the seemingly inexplicable or "illogical" choice of a past tense form.

For this reason, I would describe the past tense in the original sentence as a non-standard variant on (or colloquial substitute for) the mandative subjunctive.

MrP

[Tdol]

This construction isn't really in the subjunctive mood ... one could say 'if another meeting was held next week' and it would be fine. But his proposal is definite and therefore the simple past 'was' cannot be used.

You could if you cheated a bit:
He proposed that the meeting was to be held...

Also, as a British English speaker, I can imagine people here using the third form.