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Indicative vs Subjunctive in English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4539 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes  Studies: German | Message 1 of 24 27 September 2014 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting piece in the Economist on the increasing misuse of the Subjunctive mood in English:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2014/09/johnson-gram mar-0 The difference between: Rupert Murdoch insists that each paper turns a profit (indicative) Vs Rupert Murdoch insists that each paper turn a profit (subjunctive)
I have to say my brain is not wired up for learning grammar rules like this, and while the difference between the two sentences is obvious to me, that is only because I have immersed myself in English all my life. I doubt I would learn this rule in German just by studying it. I sort of wonder how much exposure you need before you really incorporate these rules implicitly. Apparently many English speakers are also not learning the difference as according the article the subjunctive is being increasingly misused, and is (perhaps) on the slow way out. I know lots of people enjoy learning explicit grammar rules, but always shocking to me how much my mind/brain turns off when I get a grammar rule like this explained. Edited by patrickwilken on 28 September 2014 at 2:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5314 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 2 of 24 27 September 2014 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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IMHO, learners have difficulty with the subjunctive often because the subjunctive is taught much later than the indicative, and the learner has learnt and has been using the indicative for 3 years or 8 years without realising that there're actually situations that the subjunctive should be used instead. They may not even know that the subjunctive exists.
I always get an overview of all tenses & moods before I dive into the details, and I feel that I have pretty clear concepts of their differences and when to use what. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4674 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 3 of 24 27 September 2014 at 4:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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We recommended she book her flight earlier (subjunctive).
L2 learners of English never get this right, preferring obsolete Briticisms like: We recommended her to book her flight earlier. Edited by Medulin on 27 September 2014 at 4:22pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4259 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 24 28 September 2014 at 1:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I remember the subjunctive blowing my mind when I was like 16 and got hold of an Oxford grammar or something after a tip from my English teacher. I would say that almost since then I've been using it properly. And after studying a few other IE languages the subjunctive comes almost instinctively (if I can form it).
I still remember the example somewhat: "I recommend that he see a doctor." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4644 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 5 of 24 28 September 2014 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me using the indicative in place of the subjunctive in the original example
completely changes the meaning and so is unacceptable. I wouldn't use the subjunctive version either though, very unnatural, I would say: "Rupert Murdoch insists that each paper should turn a profit". In the doctor example I might say "I recommend he sees a doctor". It feels natural and the meaning isn't changed. Medulin, that phrasing isn't obsolete, at least not in Australia. "We recommended to her" would be more common, but still avoids the subjunctive. For non-natives wanting to sound natural this is better than the subjunctive (at least to my ears). Edited by AlexTG on 28 September 2014 at 1:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4539 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 6 of 24 28 September 2014 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | ||
Funny as a fellow Australian, I find the subjunctive form very natural! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5538 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 24 28 September 2014 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Try it with "to be", which has a very distinctive subjunctive. It's a bit easier to see:
All I ask is that he be ready on time. I demanded that he stop annoying my dog. He said no. If I recall correctly, the excellent Cambridge Grammar of the English Language says that this form is alive and well. However, there's usually a shorter way of saying things in informal speech. This version, however, is painfully ungrammatical to my ear: *I demanded that he stops annoying my dog. He said no. So yeah, the English subjunctive exists. I actually built my French subjunctive around the English "demand that SUBJ VERB:SUBJUNCTIVE" construction, because it's almost exactly analogous to how the modern French subjunctive works, and because I have strong intuitive notions of grammatically and ungrammatically with English sentences like "demand that". English has an entirely separate verb form, which CGotEL calls the "irrealis", and which many ESL teachers irritatingly call the "past subjunctive", even though it has absolutely no relation whatsoever with the "demand that" subjunctive we're discussing above. This only affects the verb "to be", and only in the middle-to-formal register: If he were ready on time, we could go to a movie. As for internalizing this stuff in French, I rely on massive input supplemented by occasionally Googling things I can't explain. This seems to mostly work—my French grammar is still imperfect, but I have a very strong sense that certain things "sound wrong" and other things "sound right", and this sense is sometimes more trustworthy than my formal knowledge of French grammar. Presumably five years of full-time immersion and easy access to a French bookstore would help bring me even closer to a native-like sense of grammaticality. As far as I can tell, there's really no way to actually learn everything you need to know about grammar by explicit study—the CGotEL is the best English grammar I've ever seen, it's about 1,800 pages long, and it happily admits to being only an overview of what's really going on. It has a huge bibligraphy of linguistic papers, many of which are basically variations on the theme of, "Here's a weird construction that natives use consistently, but which doesn't fit into any textbook model of English grammar. Does anybody know what's going on here? He's our best theory." Iversen makes a distinction between broad grammatical rules which apply to huge classes of words, and "lexicalized" rules that only apply to a tiny handful of constructions built around a small class of words. And he argues that broad grammatical rules are largely learnable through explicit study. Personally, I lean more towards the school of thought which recommends "get massive input, and hope that natural language acquisition still works, and then patch up any glitches with explicit study." 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4539 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 8 of 24 28 September 2014 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
I read a fairly comprehensive, albeit concise grammar before starting reading, which was very helpful in introducing myself to these sorts of broad grammatical rules before accessing native materials. However, I think some people make the mistake that they need to be able to explicitly reproduce even these broad sorts of rules before they can start tackling books. The amount of grammar knowledge you need to make sense of your L2 at least sufficiently well to start reading is really quite low. The limiting factor is much more vocabulary, than grammar, which makes the emphasis on grammar by schools all the more mysterious. Edited by patrickwilken on 28 September 2014 at 2:44pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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