I read the following post on a Latin list:
“I tell my students, as some of you have heard me say, that language does not exist in a vacuum; it is the product of the preoccupations and values of the people who use it.
The Romans were justly famous as builders and promoters of law. Thus their
indicative mood contains flat statements and bald questions — those things
which are dear to the hearts of jurists seeking the legal truth. The
subjunctive is the vehicle of less certain information — “if this be true”
; of indirect questions “I wonder if he did his homework”; and of extra
information –“since,” “although,” etc. “Hearsay evidence” following verbs
such as “he said” and “I think” finds itself relegated to a clause with an
infinitive for a verb and an accusative for a subject.”
Hmmm. What about those languages that contain both indicative and subjunctive but whose people are not famous as builders and promoters of law? What happened?