While the

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lacks distinct

inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...

s for mood, an English subjunctive is recognized in most grammars. Definition and scope of the concept vary widely across the literature, but it is generally associated with the description of something other than apparent reality. Traditionally, the term is applied loosely to cases in which one might expect a subjunctive form in related languages, especially

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

and

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. This includes conditional clauses, wishes and reported speech. Modern descriptive grammars limit the term to cases in which some grammatical marking can be observed, nevertheless coming to varying definitions. In particular,

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narrows the definition further so that the usage of ''were'', as in "I wish she ''were'' here", traditionally known as the "past subjunctive", is instead called irrealis. According to this narrow definition, the subjunctive is a grammatical construction recognizable by its use of the ''bare form'' of a verb in a finite clause that describes a non-actual scenario. For instance, "It's essential that he be here" uses subjunctive mood while "It's essential that he is here" does not. This narrow definition forms the basis for this article.

Grammatical composition

The English subjunctive is realized as a

finite Finite is the opposite of infinite. It may refer to: * Finite number (disambiguation) * Finite set, a set whose cardinality (number of elements) is some natural number * Finite verb, a verb form that has a subject, usually being inflected or marke ...

but tenseless clause. Subjunctive clauses use a ''bare'' or ''plain'' verb form, which lacks any

. For instance, a subjunctive clause would use the verb form "be" rather than "am/is/are" and "arrive" rather than "arrives", regardless of the

person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...

and

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...

of the subject.Rodney Huddleston. "The verb." Pp. 77–78, 83, 87–88. Chapter 3 of . : (1) Subjunctive clauses: :: a. It's crucial that he ''be'' here by noon :: b. It's vital that he ''arrive'' on time English does not have a distinct subjunctive verb form, since the bare verb form is not exclusively subjunctive. It is also used in other constructions such as imperatives and infinitivals.Rodney Huddleston. "The verb." Pp. 77, 83. Chapter 3 of . : (2) Imperative: :: a. Be here by noon! :: b. Arrive on time! For almost all verbs, the bare form is

syncretic Syncretism () is the practice of combining different beliefs and various schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, thu ...

with the

present tense The present tense (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present ...

form used in all persons except the third person singular.Rodney Huddleston. "The verb." Pp. 84–85. Chapter 3 of . : (3) Present Indicative: I always arrive on time. One exception to this generalization is the

defective verb In linguistics, a defective verb is a verb that either lacks a conjugated form or entails incomplete conjugation, and thus cannot be conjugated for certain grammatical tenses, aspects, persons, genders, or moods that the majority of verbs or ...

''beware'', which has no indicative form. Another is ''be'', whose bare form is not syncretic with any of its indicative forms:Rodney Huddleston. "The verb." P. 77. Chapter 3 of . : (4) Present Indicative: :: a. I am… :: b. She is… :: c. You/we/they are…

Finiteness

Subjunctive clauses are considered finite since they have obligatory subjects, alternate with tensed forms, and are often introduced by the

complementizer In linguistics (especially generative grammar), complementizer or complementiser (glossing abbreviation: ) is a functional category (part of speech) that includes those words that can be used to turn a clause into the subject or object of a se ...

''that''.

Triggering contexts

Subjunctive clauses most commonly appear as clausal complements of non-veridical operators. The most common use of the English subjunctive is the ''mandative'' or ''

jussive The jussive (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood of verbs for issuing orders, commanding, or exhorting (within a subjunctive framework). English verbs are not marked for this mood. The mood is similar to the ''cohortative'' mood, which typically a ...

subjunctive'', which is optionally used in the clausal complements of some predicates whose meanings involve obligation.Rodney Huddleston. "Content clauses and reported speech." Pp. 995–996. Chapter 11 of . : (5) Mandative subjunctive: :: a. I insist that he leave us alone. :: b. We demand that it be done tomorrow. :: c. It's preferable that you not publish the story. :: d. My recommendation is that they not be punished. The following pair illustrates the semantic contribution of the subjunctive mandative. The subjunctive example unambiguously expresses a desire for a future situation, whereas the non-subjunctive (indicative) example is potentially ambiguous, either (i) expressing a desire to change the addressee's ''beliefs'' about the current situation, or (ii) as a "covert mandative", having the same meaning as the subjunctive mandative.Rodney Huddleston. "Content clauses and reported speech." Pp. 995–999. Chapter 11 of . : (6) Subjunctive mandative compared: :: a. Subjunctive mandative: I insist that Andrea be here. :: b. Indicative (whether non-mandative or covert mandative): I insist that Andrea is here. The subjunctive is thus not the only means of marking an embedded clause as mandative: examples can be ambiguous between mandative and non-mandative interpretations, and dialects vary in their use of the subjunctive. In particular, the subjunctive is more widely used in American English than in British English. (The covert mandative is very unusual in American English.Rodney Huddleston. "Content clauses and reported speech." P. 995. Chapter 11 of .) Use of the subjunctive mandative increased during the 20th century in American, British, and Australian English. The subjunctive is occasionally found in clauses expressing a probable condition, such as ''If I be found guilty…'' (more common is ''am'' or ''should be''; for more information see

English conditional sentences Prototypical conditional sentences in English are those of the form ''"If X, then Y".'' The clause ''X'' is referred to as the ''antecedent'' (or ''protasis''), while the clause ''Y'' is called the ''consequent'' (or ''apodosis''). A conditional ...

). This usage is mostly old-fashioned or formal, although it is found in some common fixed expressions such as ''if need be''. Somewhat more common is the use after ''whether'' in the exhaustive conditional construction: "He must be tended with the same care, whether he be friend or foe." In both of these uses, it is possible to invert subject and verb and omit the subordinator. Analogous uses are occasionally found after other words, such as ''unless'', ''until'', ''whoever'', ''wherever'': :(7) :: a. Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. :: b. Whoever he be, he shall not go unpunished. In most of the above examples a construction with ''should'' can be used as an alternative: "I insist that he should leave now" etc. This "''should'' mandative" was the most common kind of mandative at the start of the 20th century, not only in

British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...

but also in

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. However, in American English its use decreased rapidly in the early 20th century and it had become very unusual by the 21st; in British English its use also decreased, but later and not so drastically. The subjunctive is not generally used after verbs such as ''hope'' and ''expect''. The subjunctive can also be used in clauses with the

conjunction Conjunction may refer to: * Conjunction (grammar), a part of speech * Logical conjunction, a mathematical operator ** Conjunction introduction, a rule of inference of propositional logic * Conjunction (astronomy), in which two astronomical bodies ...

''lest'', which generally expresses a potential adverse event:Rodney Huddleston. "Content clauses and reported speech." P. 1000. Chapter 11 of . :(8) :: a. I am running faster lest she catch me (i.e., "in order that she not catch me") :: b. I was worried lest she catch me (i.e., "that she might catch me") Subjunctive clauses can occasionally occur unembedded, with the force of a wish or a third person imperative (and such forms can alternatively be analyzed as imperatives). This is most common nowadays in formulaic remnants of archaic optative constructions, such as "(God) bless you", "God save the Queen", "heaven forbid", "peace be with you" (any of which can instead start with ''may'': "May God bless you", etc.); "long live…"; "truth be told", "so be it", "suffice it to say", "woe betide…", and more.Rodney Huddleston. "Clause type and illocutionary force." P. 944. Chapter 10 of .

Variant terminology and misconceptions

The term "subjunctive" has been extended to other grammatical phenomena in English which do not comprise a

natural class In phonology, a natural class is a set of phonemes in a language that share certain distinctive features. A natural class is determined by participation in shared phonological processes, described using the minimum number of features necessary for d ...

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s of English sometimes apply the term to verb forms used in subjunctive clauses, regardless of their other uses.Rodney Huddleston. "The verb." P. 83. Chapter 3 of . Some traditional grammars refer to non-factual instances of irrealis "were" as "past subjunctives".Rodney Huddleston. "The verb." Pp. 87–88. Chapter 3 of . So do modern descriptive grammars, while noting that the "past" is misleading as it does not correspond to tense, using the traditionalist term only to differentiate it from the "present subjunctive" discussed in this article. The term "subjunctive" is sometimes extended further to describe any grammatical reflection of modal remoteness or counterfactuality. For instance, conditionals with a counterfactual or modally remote meaning are sometimes referred to as " subjunctive conditionals", even by those who acknowledge it as a misnomer. The English subjunctive is the subject of many common misconceptions, such as that it is a tense, that its use is decreasing when it is in fact increasing, and that it is necessary or sufficient for counterfactuality in conditionals.Rodney Huddleston. "Content clauses and reported speech." Pp. 999–1000. Chapter 11 of .von Fintel, Kai; Iatridou, Sabine (2020)
Prolegomena to a Theory of X-Marking
''Manuscript''. Writing in the ''

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'', Geoff Pullum argued that mention of the subjunctive is often used as a status symbol:

Virtually none of the things people believe about the subjunctive or its status in English are true. Most purists who witter on about it couldn’t actually pass a test on distinguishing subjunctive from nonsubjunctive clauses to save their sorry asterisks. But then they don’t have to: Merely mentioning the subjunctive approvingly and urging that it be taught is enough to establish one’s credentials as a better class of person.

Historical change

had a morphological subjunctive, which was lost by the time of

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. The syntactic subjunctive of Modern English was more widely used in the past than it is today.Stein, Dieter. "The expression of deontic and epistemic modality and the subjunctive: ". Studies in Early Modern English, edited by Dieter Kastovsky, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011, pp. 403-412. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110879599.403 Examples of subjunctive uses in archaic modern English: * ''I will not let thee go, except ''

unless ''Unless'' is the final novel by Canadian writer Carol Shields, first published by Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins in 2002. Semi-autobiographical, it was the capstone to Shields's writing career: she died shortly after its publicati ...

' thou bless me.'' ( King James Bible, Genesis 32:26) * ''Murder, though it have no tongue, will speak.'' (Shakespeare, ''

Hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

'') Older forms of modern English also make greater use of subject–auxiliary inversion in subjunctive clauses: *''Should you feel hungry, …'' (equivalent to ''If you (should) feel hungry'') *''Be he called on by God, …'' (equivalent to "If he be (''i.e.'' If he is) called on by God, …") *''Be they friend or foe, …'' (equivalent to "(No matter) whether they be friend or foe, …") *''Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home'' (from "

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"; meaning "even though") Some examples of this sort survive in common usage as set expressions: * "come what may" * "God forbid" * "so be it" * "so help me God" * "be that as it may"

Notes

References

Bibliography

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:English Subjunctive Grammatical moods Subjunctive