9. The Subjunctive

I consider that, for practical purposes, the subjunctive mood is dead in BrE. I am sometimes taken to task by other teachers for making this statement, and in a recent discussion on an English site elsewhere on the net I was accused of ‘dumbing down’ the grammar of English. So, I thought I’d post my thoughts here to see if I get any reaction.

Let’s take the so-called past subjunctive first.

1. If I was/were you, I’d accept the job.

2. You’d feel differently if you were a woman,

3. If I had an opportunity like that, I’d take it.

It is true that in #1, were is the subjunctive form of BE. However, I prefer to present this as an idiomatic expression, or a fossilised phrase, for three reasons:

1. Many speakers of BrE, particularly those under the age of 40, would say was here.

2. Even many of those who use were in the expression if I were you use was in other expressions where were is the ‘grammatically correct’ form: He’d be a lot happier.

If he ….. still working in Turkey.

3. BE is the only verb in English which has a different form of the verb in the subjunctive – and only in the first and third forms singular. In #2 and #3, for example, and in examples with all other verbs in English, the subjunctive form is identical to the indicative.

These forms may be rendered by a recognisably subjunctive form in other languages, and  they may have had a recognisably subjunctive form in earlier versions of English. Today, however, we cannot see the difference. It seems therefore pointless to call them subjunctive forms. I shall continue to present if I were you as an idiomatic or fossilised expression, and say that the subjunctive mood is dead in modern English – in its past tense form at least.

Let’s move on to the present subjunctive.

This is more recognisable; for BE it is be, and for HAVE it is have, in all persons. For other verbs it is the same as the indicative except for the third person singular, which drops the indicative –s: he come.

It is used after words expressing the idea that something is to be wished for, or is important:

4. I suggest that he be promoted.

5. I insist that John finish his homework before going out.

6. It is essential that she have a proper breakfast befor leaving the house in the morning.

So, why do I claim that the present subjunctive is dead?  Theer are four reasons for this:

1. Apart from the verb BE, The subjunctive is recognisable only in the third person singular. With all other persons, the subjunctive is identical to the indicative: I insist that they finish… , It is essential that you have … .

2, Many speakers of BrE naturally use the indicative anyway: I suggest that he is… , I insist that John finishes … , It is essential that she has … .

3. Even among those who do not use the indicative, most prefer to use a construction with should: I suggest that he should be… , In insist that John should finish… , It is essential that she should have… .

4. The subjunctive sounds stilted today to many native speakers.

So, why torment learners with a form that is alien to most native speakers?

Expressions such as Long live the Queen, as it were and so be it can easily be presented as idiomatic expressions. Life is a lot simpler for everybody .if we stop pretending that the subjunctive is alive and kicking in British English. It’s a different story with American English, but I am a speaker of British English, and that’s the dialect I work in.

8. Going to Work, in Context

If we have no context for the short utterance: “I am going to work”, it is very difficult to say exactly what message the speaker is trying to convey. In today’s blog, I shall look at three of the possible messages. Please note that the situation is not as confusing as it might appear; in context the intended message will normally be clear to the listener.   

1.  I normally use the car to travel everywhere. Unfortunately, my husband needs it this week, so I am going to work by bike. It’s a new experience for me.

Here am going to is a present progressive (continuous) construction, implying that the activity is of limited duration and is happening around the present time. Work, the destination of the cycle journey is a noun, conveying approximately the same meaning as place of work or the office/factory/shop/etc.

2. My husband needs the car, so I am going to work by bike tomorrow.

Once again, am going to is a present progressive  construction, but this time it looks forward to the future. The going is taking place tomorrow. The present progressive is often used for activities which have been arranged for the future. Work is, as beforem a noun.

3. My husband has taken the children to America for a month. Wonderful! I am going to work on my novel for thirty days without any interruption at all.

Now am going to is operating as what is often referred to as the (BE) going-to future, and work is the infinitive form of the verb.

Whilst context and co-text usually ensure that native speakers have no problems here, learners can become very puzzled. This is sometimes a result of a lack of awareness of certain features of English. Some of the more relevant of these are:

• Whilst teachers and course books rarely mention this, the (BE) going-to future is formed from the present progressive of GO. It is understandable that when learners are told that the present progressive and (BE) going to are two different ways of expressing the future, some can be confused.
• (BE) going to and the present progressive form of the full verb can both be used to express futurity: I am going to meet her tomorrow and I am meeting her tomorrow. Usually the two forms convey a slightly different message, though sometimes the difference between the two is very slight indeed. (For more on this, see http://www.gramorak.com/Articles/Future.pdf pages 3-5)
• The word work can be used as a noun or verb; when the noun is preceded by the preposition to it is identical in appearance to the to-infinitive form of the verb.
• The noun work (when it means place of work)is not preceded by the in situations in which most other nouns would be. It shares this characteristic with such words as school, hospital, university, prison, etc, and with bed and home.

So long as the teacher is aware of the potential problems for the learner, confusion can be avoided. The underlined words in the preceding sentence are important.

7. Pedantry and Lowering Standards

As a teacher-trainer, I have been accused of being pedantic when I refuse to accept such written forms as: I think John should of done it; I have been accused of lowering standards when I have said that trainees should teach their students to utter the words I think he should have as /eI θIŋk iː ʃʊd əv/; And I have been called a hypocrite when both things have occurred in the same session.

What many people, including some teachers, unfortunately, do not realise is that written English and spoken English are two different things.

If we are describing our thoughts about a certain person’s unfulfilled obligation in writing, then the written form accepted as correct at present throughout the English speaking world is either I think that he should have done it or I think he should have done it. Fifty years ago my schoolmasters insisted on the that in ‘correct’ written English, but most of us do not insist on that now. The fact that the letter h appears at the beginning of the words he and have does not mean that they necessarily need to be pronounced in the normal conversation, though they may be pronounced in formal rhetoric. It is not ‘uneducated’ to drop one’s aitches after consonant sounds in conversation; most speakers, even professors of English, do it. The natural form of the utterance of those words for southern British speakers is: as /eI θIŋk iː ʃʊd əv dʌn It/. This may be rendered in informal writing as I think he should’ve done it.

Unfortunately, the /əv/ pronunciation of the word have is identical to the pronunciation of the weak form of of. This is what causes uneducated people to write ‘should of’. This is as incorrect as the ate rendering of 8. In fiction, writers may indicate their desire to present a character in a certain way by having the character say should of. This indicates to the reader that the character is uneducated. (Even though the pronunciation of educated and uneducated people is actually the same here!) We have a similar situation when a writer will indicate that a character says sez; the pronunciation, /sez/, is exactly the same of that of an educated person, but the latter’s utterance would be spelt s a y s.

So, insisting on the correct form in formal writing is not pedantry; and dropping your aitches and using contractions in speech is not lowering your standards. It is accepting the realities of the language.

6. Site Recommendation

I originally started this blog with the idea of publishing my ramblings and of answering questions from students and teachers on abstruse points of grammar. There seemed to be lots of places on the net where prescriptive pedants were telling you what you should say,  but not many places where we could  discuss what is actually said, and why it is said.

A day or two after I had started this blog, I looked around for sites on which I might announce the arrival of this stunning gramorakial service. An early discovery was usingenglish.com.

Here, students and teachers post a wide range of questions which are answered and discussed by a motley crew of students, teachers, academics and just people who are interested in English and the teaching of it. Some of the contributors are silly, some ignorant, some opinionated, but most are experienced, thoughtful teachers who give sound and helpful advice. I wish that site had been around when I was a beginning teacher; I also wish I had discovered it when I was more experienced – it’s not just beginning students who can learn from the answers.

So, I hope you will continue to read my blog to see if there may be something of interest here, and also to send in questions, but I do recommend that you also have a look at usingenglish.com

My own website on grammar is also up and running, thanks to EJ of Webbdesign. So far it has a number of articles (stunningly written, I feel) on various issues concerning the English Verb. Drop in – it’s free!  www.gramorak.com.

5. More on shall/will

As readers of this blog are only too aware, the shall/will problem is a hobby horse of mine. In my fourth post I quoted from that ‘supremely well qualified’ former secondary school headmaster and teacher of English, Cedric Astle BA [Hons]:

The two verbs, ‘I will’  (indicating determination) and ‘I shall’ (futurity), are often confused, sometimes with amusing results (e.g. the well-known sentence: I will drown and nobody shall save me!’ attributed to a foreign student, out of his debt in both the river and his English grammar.)

That hoary story is supposedly amusing because the student was conveying the message (according to people like Mr Astle) that his intention/desire was to drown, and that he placed an obligation on others not to stop him. What he should have said was, “I shall drown, and nobody will save me,” conveying the message that his death by drowning was imminient, and that there were no signs of anybody about to save him.

Actually, of course, most onlookers would not have understood the shall/will difference, and would have clearly understood what he intended to say – though they might have wondered why he didn’t shout a simple “Help”

In The Groundwork of English Grammar (1954), Frederick T Wood, BA, PhD, attempted to reduce the instructional matter to a minimum. However, in the Preface he wrote, “The one exception to this is the chapter on will and shall, where, owing to the confusion which seems to reign in the minds of pupils, and often, it is to be feared, in the minds of even educated adults as well, a fuller treatment seemed desirable”. Over half a century ago, it seems,  even educated adults were confused by the shall/will situation.

In the fuller treatment referred to, Dr Wood explained why: “Until some two hundred years ago ” [i.e. about 1750] “practice varied a good deal, so that the position was rather chaotic.” Wood in effect admitted that the system he was explaining was not a natural phenomenom in early English. He went on on: “about the middle of the eighteenth century, it settled down to a recognised system which all educated people sought to use and which therefore came to be regarded as ‘correct’ and any variation from it as incorrect.” So, all educated people, a tiny minority of the population at that time, sought to use an unnatural system which was ‘recognised’  by a handful of self-appointed experts, such as Lowth (1762) and Murray(1795).

Wood then wrote some 3,000 words to explain three conjugations, Subjective Volition (will), Objective Volition (shall), andFuture Tense (shall/will). In his conjugations, he included the forms thou shalt and thou wilt. One wonders if he imagined them to be still in common use in 1954. Poor Wood had to resort to some tortuous explanations in his attempts  to present a logical system, and made some statements which, even half a century ago, must have sounded extreme to most native speakers, for example: “It is just nonsense to say’I will be sixteen in June’, since no question of determination or willingness is involved”. Even Wood had to add a section on “anomalies in the use of the Future Tense”.

A stream of self-appointed experts from Wallis (1653) onwards decided that the ‘future tense’ in English was formed with the auxiliary verb ‘shall’ for the first person singular and plural and ‘will’ for all other persons. Generations of pupils were forced to learn this unnatural rule and, even today, some writers still believe that deviation from the rule is incorrect.

But then between 10% and 40% (depending on the poll) of Americans believe that the heavens, earth and all life were created by God during six 24-hour days between 5,500 and 10,00 years ago.

I expect a few people genuinely believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

 

ps: Don’t forget to visit my new website at www.gramorak.com. It already has a few articles on the English Verb, with more in the pipeline.

4. Rules and Rubbish

On a recent visit to England, I picked up a test yourself book in a second-hand bookshop: “How good is your English? by a  certain Cedric Astle BA [Hons]  who, ‘as a former secondary school headmaster and teacher of English … is supremely well-qualified to write this book’.

I looked at some of the questions, and groaned. Old-fashioned prescriptive grammar at its worst. Some of the information given was pretty outdated when I was at school in the 1950s and 60s, and I was horrified to discover that this book was written in 1979 and reprinted in 1988 (or  MCMLXXIX and MCMLXXXVIII, as the publisher so unhelpfully expressed the years).

Here are some examples of what was being passed off as ‘good grammar’ only 23 years ago – and probably still is today (I have added my comments in italics):

Can you say what is wrong with these sentences?

Q. Can you imagine him forgetting a date like that?

A.  him× his√. The possessive case should be used for a pronoun followed by a gerund.

Apart from the fact that  nouns in English don’t have ‘cases’, insistence on the possessive form in such constructions is simply pedantry. The Fowlers claimed in ‘The King’s English’ (1906) that failure to use a possessive form was “grammatically indefensible”, but used Latin grammar to support their claim. They also produced many examples  of what they considered to be incorrect usage taken from serious newspapers and respected writers, which suggests that even a century ago the Fowlers’ views were not universally accepted.  Indeed in ‘An Advanced English Syntax’ published two years earlier, , CT Onions argued that there was “nothing illogical or inconsistent” in the use of the non-possessive form. In the Tracts of the Society for  Pure English between 1925 and 1927,  H W Fowler argued his point with Jespersen, who forcefully defended the construction so disliked by Fowler.

More recent authorities including such luninaries as Eric Patridge (1947),  Sir Ernest Gowers (1954) and R W Burchfield (1996), have discussed the topic. While some feel that there are good reasons for retaining the use of the possessive, none claim that not using it is incorrect.

Q. Can I drive you home?

A. Can× may√.Confusion of two verbs results in an impropriety frequently encountered and generally condoned. It should be remembered, however, that ‘can’ refers to capacity or ability to do something; ‘may to permission or sanction.

The plain fact is that for a majority of native speakers of English ‘can’ now can refer to permission or sanction; to such speakers ‘may’ can sound pretentious.

Q. They didn’t use to allow such goings-on here.

A. didn’t use×  used not√. Inelegant form of verb used, though the expression (didn’t use) is frequently used by inelegant speakers.

Inelegant speakers must make up over 90% of the population, then.  ‘used not’ sounds odd these days to most people.

Q. If I was wrong, I’d be the first to admit it.

A. was×  were√. Subjunctive mood required when conjunction ‘if’ introduces a supposition.

I use ‘were’ myself for hypothetical utterances – but I am aware that I am now in the minority of native speakers to do so.The subjunctive has been dying for a long time and, for most speakers, it is now dead.

Q. I will never be out of debt.

A. will×  shall√.  The two verbs, ‘I will’  (indicating determination) and ‘I shall’ (futurity), are often confused, sometimes with amusing results (e.g. the well-known sentence: I will drown and nobody shall save me!’ attributed to a foreign student, out of his debt in both the river and his English grammar.)

I have ranted about shall/will in other posts on this blog, so I’ll just repeat here: Only a small minority of southern British speakers of English ever followed the shall/will rule. Most native speakers do not use ‘shall’ for futurity.

Q. Due to the postal strike, I did not receive your letter in time.

A. Due×  owing√. The word ‘due’ which is adjectival in function, should be logically related toits noun or pronoun.

Says who? Cedric Astle BA [Hons]! As Burchfield points out, “Hostility to the construction (‘due to’ used as a prepositional phrase in verbless clauses) is an entirely 20th century phenomenom. Opinion remains sharply divided, but it looks as if this use of ‘due to’ will form part of the natural language of the 21st century as one more example of a forgotten battle.”

Some of my TEFL trainees who were taught by such supremely well-qualified teachers as Cedric Astle BA [Hons] have accused me of lowering standards by teaching my students grossly incorrect grammar. My response is simply that my tolerance of constructions they and prescriptive grammarians so dislike is simply a recognition that most serious gramarians describe the language as it is, not as they think it should be. If many moderately well educated speakers us a construction or word normally and naturally, then it is not grossly ( or even slightly) incorrect. The fact that it might not have been considered correct fifty years ago is not relevant today.

The language that we speak now has evolved and changed constantly since it first appeared as a language distinct from the Germanic languages in which lay its roots. And, since at least the sixteenth century, there have always been writers who deplore the ‘lowering of standards’ and wish to freeze it in some way at the state it was in during their teachers’ youth. However, he language of  Anthony Burgess is no ‘worse’ (or ‘better’) than that of Jane Austen; hers no worse than Shakespeare’s; his no worse than Chaucer’s. Language changes.

It is true that the language of serious writers tends to be more formal in construction, uses richer vocabulary, and retains older constructions than the language of most speakers in everyday life. But it is the language of most speakers in everyday life that most foreigners wish to learn. ‘To whom were you talking as you came in’ is not natural spoken English; ‘Who were you talking to as you came in’ is.

Whether we like it or not, many forms once deplored by certain authorities (Split infinitives, prepositions at the end of sentences, ‘I will’ to express futurity, ‘can I?’ to ask permission, ‘hopefully’ as a sentence adverb meaning ‘it is to be hoped’ ….) are now part of our modern language. Accepting them is no more a lowering of standards than preferring a car to a pony and trap.

References:

Astle, Ceedric, (1979), How good is your English, Kingswood: Elliot Right Way Books

Burchfield, R W (ed), (1996), The New Fowler’s Moden English Usage, Oxford: OUP

Fowler, H W & F G, (1906) The King’s English, Oxford: Clarendon Press

Fowler, H W, (1925), “Italic, Fused Participles, &c.”, Society for Pure English Tract 22. Oxford: Clarendon Press,

Fowler, H W, (1927), “Ing“, Society for Pure English Tract 26. Oxford: Clarendon Press

Onions, C T, (1904)  An Advanced English Syntax, London: Swan Sonnenschein

Gowers, Sir Ernest, (1986) The Complete Plain Words (3rd edn), London: HMSO

Jespersen, Otti, (1926), On some disputed points in English Grammar, Society for Pure English Tract 25. Oxford: Clarendon Press

Partridge, Eric (1947), Usage and Abusage, London: Hamish Hamilton

 

ps: Don’t forget to visit my new website at www.gramorak.com. It already has a few articles on the English Verb, with more in the pipeline.

3. Wallis and ‘will/shall’

The next (chronologically) grammar on my bookshelf is Wallis, John (1653) Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae. While this went through many editions over the next century or so, and was apparently quite influential, it does not reach my top ten of grammars for two main reasons:

1. It is written in Latin. Apart from the fact that writing a book on English grammar in Latin  strikes me as perverse, my 50-year old schoolboy latin was hardly up to the task of decyphering this.

2. It is John Wallis who first publicly announced to the world (in Latin):  “The rule is… to express a future event without emotional overtones, one should say I shall, we shall, but you/he/she/they will; conversely, for emphasis, willfulness, or insistence, one should say I/we will, but you/he/she/they shall”.

To be fair to Johannis, many leading writers of the time still wrote their masterpieces in Latin, in order to reach an international audience of scholars. Also, One of Wallis’s aims was to prepare a work for foreigners wishing to learn English; to use an internationally understood language  to present his subject matter is understandable. And, finally, Wallis did move away from a Latin-influenced approach in his treatment of English grammar as  something to be studied in its own right. Unlike Bullokar, who claimed that English nouns had five cases, Wallis recognised that “substantives in English do not have different genders or cases”.

So far, so good. But for the shall/will distinction he shall be damned for all eternity (should that be will be damned?) This distinction, if it ever truly existed, was natural to only a minority of speakers of British English, but had become, by the end of the nineteenth century, one of the shibboleths of educated gentlemen. I remember being ridiculed at my would-be public school fifty years ago for using an I will instead of the prescribed I shall. Finally the system was beaten so thoroughly into me, that I used it ‘correctly’ – and still do today, unfortunately. I say ‘unfortunately’ because I work in the field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Students of mine who have been taught  from fossilised texts about the shall/will distinction are unimpressed when  I try to tell them that it is unimportant in the English of today – dammit, I use the distinction myself, so it must be correct.

So, back to the bookshelf, Johannis, and stay there till you rot.

ps: Don’t forget to visit my new website at www.gramorak.com. It already has a few articles on the English Verb, with more in the pipeline.