philo2009
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2009
- Member Type
- Academic
- Native Language
- British English
- Home Country
- UK
- Current Location
- Japan
fivejedjon wrote:
It must be that, because it is not standard BrE.
I do not believe that it is any more acceptable in (formal/careful) AmE, and await with interest any AmE native speaker, apart from the irascible 2006, who would claim that it is!
The verb in the dependent clause therefore conveys a distancing/remote message suggested by a past tense. It is not particularly helpful in modern English to insist that this be a subjunctive.
Even though this is a relatively minor analytical issue, there are sound reasons for reckoning the underlined form in a sentence such as
I wish he didn't complain all the time.
a form of the subjunctive, rather than the indicative, mood.
Given that mood in English is a morphosemantic category of the verb (i.e. one typically reckoned according to a combination of both formal and meaning-related factors):
(1) The temporal reference of the underlined form is, not to the past, but to the present. This is an archetypal feature of past subjunctive forms in virtually all Indo-european languages, whilst it is extremely atypical of indicative past-tense forms (which, in almost all cases, refer to the past).
(2) The underlined form is counterfactual: its negation actively denotes an affirmation of the event in question (i.e. in reality, he does complain all the time) - similarly an utterly atypical feature of an indicative verb-form, and yet a typically subjunctive one.
(3) Forms which (in combination with certain persons of the verb) are exclusively subjunctive share privilege of occurrence in the same sentence-position with the underlined form in formal/careful AmE and BrE usage, to wit e.g.
I wish I were a bird.
I wish she weren't so critical.
whilst the acceptability of corresponding exclusively indicative forms,
?I wish I was a bird.
?I wish she wasn't so critical.
is limited to BrE only.
It must be that, because it is not standard BrE.
I do not believe that it is any more acceptable in (formal/careful) AmE, and await with interest any AmE native speaker, apart from the irascible 2006, who would claim that it is!
The verb in the dependent clause therefore conveys a distancing/remote message suggested by a past tense. It is not particularly helpful in modern English to insist that this be a subjunctive.
Even though this is a relatively minor analytical issue, there are sound reasons for reckoning the underlined form in a sentence such as
I wish he didn't complain all the time.
a form of the subjunctive, rather than the indicative, mood.
Given that mood in English is a morphosemantic category of the verb (i.e. one typically reckoned according to a combination of both formal and meaning-related factors):
(1) The temporal reference of the underlined form is, not to the past, but to the present. This is an archetypal feature of past subjunctive forms in virtually all Indo-european languages, whilst it is extremely atypical of indicative past-tense forms (which, in almost all cases, refer to the past).
(2) The underlined form is counterfactual: its negation actively denotes an affirmation of the event in question (i.e. in reality, he does complain all the time) - similarly an utterly atypical feature of an indicative verb-form, and yet a typically subjunctive one.
(3) Forms which (in combination with certain persons of the verb) are exclusively subjunctive share privilege of occurrence in the same sentence-position with the underlined form in formal/careful AmE and BrE usage, to wit e.g.
I wish I were a bird.
I wish she weren't so critical.
whilst the acceptability of corresponding exclusively indicative forms,
?I wish I was a bird.
?I wish she wasn't so critical.
is limited to BrE only.
