Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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 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.
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.
Open conditional sentences generally use the indicative mood in both protasis and apodosis, although in some general conditions the subjunctive mood is used in the protasis. Ideal and unreal conditionals use the subjunctive in the protasis, and usually they also use the subjunctive in the apodosis, though sometimes the indicative may be used.
In a counterfactual conditional, the imperfect subjunctive is used for the condition, and the conditional mood for the main clause. A more informal equivalent is to use the imperfect indicative in both parts.
In republican Latin, the verb in a dum clause, just as with other temporal clauses, was changed into the subjunctive mood when in indirect speech (imperfect subjunctive in a past context, present subjunctive in a present or future context). sē quisque cōnspicī, dum tāle facinus faceret, properābat (Sallust) [187]
The imperfect subjunctive is used in situations similar to the present subjunctive above, but in a past-time context. The imperfect and pluperfect subjunctives can describe something which should have been done in the past, but which it is now too late for: [332] [296] at tū dictīs, Albāne, manērēs! (Virgil) [333]
In a past unreal conditional the protasis has either an imperfect or an aorist indicative, and in the apodosis either an imperfect or aorist indicative with ἄν (án) or κέ (ké), or an aorist or present optative with κέ (ké). In the following example, νόησε is aorist indicative, and ἀπολοιτο is aorist optative: