3 - The subjunctive mood

Summary

Introduction

The analytic part of this book begins with a series of studies of major verb categories: modality, aspect and voice. As part of this, the present chapter will investigate recent changes in the use of the subjunctive mood, an inflectional category of the verb. Semantically, the subjunctive mood is closely related to the modal auxiliaries, which will be the topic of the following chapter. Just like some modal auxiliaries, the subjunctive in English can be used to express obligation or necessity (he demands that the evidence be/must be/should be demolished). In if-clauses it can express ‘irrealis’, similar to the use of such modals as could and might.

These semantically interrelated verbal categories, mood and modal auxiliaries, have been much studied both synchronically and diachronically. The demise of the subjunctive is one of the reiterated putative changes in English – both in terms of long-term developments and ongoing change in PDE. Bevier (1931: 207) calls the subjunctive a ‘disappearing feature of the English language’; Foster (1968: 220) remarks that ‘the subjunctive mood of the verb is a rather feeble and restricted device in modern English’ and Harsh (1968: 98), on the basis of his textual evidence, concludes that the ‘inflected subjunctive forms decline to the point of non-existence in present-day English’. Towards the end of the twentieth century, Givón (1993: 274) points out that ‘the old grammatical category of subjunctive has almost disappeared’, and according to Peters' most recent comment (2004: 520), the ‘subjunctive is a pale shadow of what it used to be’.