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The English subjunctive is realized as a finite but tenseless clause.Subjunctive clauses use a bare or plain verb form, which lacks any inflection.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 and number of the subject.
The subjunctive (also known as conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of an utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude toward it.Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, obligation, or action that has not yet occurred; the precise situations in which they are used ...
The word subjunctive as used to denote grammatical mood derives directly from the Latin modus subjunctivus. This, in itself, is a translation from Greek. The original Greek term is hypotaktike enklisis i.e. subordinated mood. In Greek the subjunctive is almost exclusively used in subordinate clauses. The earliest known usage of the term ...
1 In modern usage, the imperfect indicative usually replaces the imperfect subjunctive in this type of sentence. The subjunctive mood figures prominently in the grammar of the Romance languages, which require this mood for certain types of dependent clauses. This point commonly causes difficulty for English speakers learning these languages.
Old English subjunctive; Optative (Ancient Greek) Optative mood; P. Permissive mood; ... Subjunctive in Dutch; Subjunctive mood; T. Tense–aspect–mood; V. Volitive ...
The subjunctive mood, sometimes called conjunctive mood, has several uses in dependent clauses. Examples include discussing hypothetical or unlikely events, expressing opinions or emotions, or making polite requests (the exact scope is language-specific). A subjunctive mood exists in English, but it often is not obligatory.
The subjunctive mood form is used in dependent clauses and in situations where English would use an infinitive (which is absent in Greek). There is a perfect form in both tenses, which is expressed by an inflected form of the imperfective auxiliary verb έχω "have" and an invariant verb form derived from the perfective stem of the main verb.
Many languages do not have a morphological subjunctive (e.g. Danish and Dutch) and many that do have it do not use it for this sort of conditional (e.g. French, Swahili, all Indo-Aryan languages that have a subjunctive). Moreover, languages that do use the subjunctive for such conditionals only do so if they have a specific past subjunctive form.