Quoting a NYT article:
And when a newly inaugurated Mr. Trump sought a loyalty pledge from Mr. Comey and later asked that he end an investigation into……..
What is the tense and mood of “end”? It is an example of English lacking a differentiated past subjunctive [think Spanish: que terminara] except in ‘be’ [were]. Even the past subjunctive, imperfect subjunctive in Spanish, of ‘be’ in English stumbles in that if ‘be’ were the verb [note past subjunctive there], it would be “asked that he be present”, not “asked that he were present”. Only in an if-clause do we used the past subjunctive and only with the verb ‘be’.
Have I missed something? Likely.
I think this points to one reason a whole grammatical category begins to fall into desuetude, when the phonetic changes erode and wipe out distinctions the way the loss of final -e do so in English, leaving only the -s of the third person singular present indicative to change to zero in the subjunctive e.g. I suggest that he run in the 10K b/c he runs well. Otherwise, no difference. I posed such a distinction to my granddaughter the other day and she said either form, indicative or subjunctive, worked for her.
And we must admit, the modals have taken over the function of the subjunctive.
Please, comments, criticism, new information?
Pat’s Polemics
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