Language desk | ||
---|---|---|
< October 27 | << Sep | October | Nov >> | October 29 > |
Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives |
---|
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages. |
Our late colleague Medeis often talked about how the subjunctive is alive and well in America, but has more or less fallen into disuse elsewhere in the anglosphere. Americans require "If I were a rich man", while others settle for "If I was a rich man" (except when singing the song '" If I Were a Rich Man", of course).
But one American use of the conditional subjunctive has never sat well with me, as it sounds like overkill:
The rest of the world says:
So, is the former construction considered generally acceptable (prescriptively) in the USA, or acceptable within certain argots or idiolects, or are such instances considered (by people other than those who speak this way, of course) examples of grammatical ignorance? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 22:25, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Some people (myself among them) take the position that there isn't really a meaningful subjunctive in modern English. There are two constructions which survive from the old historical morphological subjunctive ("If I/he/she/it were..." and "I insist he be quiet") and a few scattered quasi-archaic relics ("Howbeit" etc.) and very little to connect these together based on any evidence from the synchronic grammar of English. "Would" etc. are modal verbs -- English verbs preceded by modals can have meanings comparable to those that subjunctive-inflected verbs have in languages where subjunctive inflections are a meaningful part of the living language, but that doesn't mean that the English modal constructions should be called "subjunctive" (I would advise against that). AnonMoos ( talk) 08:18, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Language desk | ||
---|---|---|
< October 27 | << Sep | October | Nov >> | October 29 > |
Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives |
---|
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages. |
Our late colleague Medeis often talked about how the subjunctive is alive and well in America, but has more or less fallen into disuse elsewhere in the anglosphere. Americans require "If I were a rich man", while others settle for "If I was a rich man" (except when singing the song '" If I Were a Rich Man", of course).
But one American use of the conditional subjunctive has never sat well with me, as it sounds like overkill:
The rest of the world says:
So, is the former construction considered generally acceptable (prescriptively) in the USA, or acceptable within certain argots or idiolects, or are such instances considered (by people other than those who speak this way, of course) examples of grammatical ignorance? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 22:25, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Some people (myself among them) take the position that there isn't really a meaningful subjunctive in modern English. There are two constructions which survive from the old historical morphological subjunctive ("If I/he/she/it were..." and "I insist he be quiet") and a few scattered quasi-archaic relics ("Howbeit" etc.) and very little to connect these together based on any evidence from the synchronic grammar of English. "Would" etc. are modal verbs -- English verbs preceded by modals can have meanings comparable to those that subjunctive-inflected verbs have in languages where subjunctive inflections are a meaningful part of the living language, but that doesn't mean that the English modal constructions should be called "subjunctive" (I would advise against that). AnonMoos ( talk) 08:18, 29 October 2018 (UTC)