All the talk of the subjunctive in this thread is quite interesting and I am quite intrigued by nemesio's definition of a "tense." I will definitely do some reading on the universally accepted definition.
I was taught in college that English has no true subjunctive. The Romance languages, for example, have a specific verb form to express the subjunctive, whereas English depends upon auxiliary verbs to express the condition. It was this argument that provoked my Strunk & Wagnall's (from 1993) to refer to the subjunctive as a "mood" and not a "tense."
As I understand it, the subjunctive came about as a grammatical marker of subordination. That is, late Latin speakers would use it in any subordinate clause. Hence, its name: subjunctive: the mood for "subjoining" a subordinate clause to the main verb.
But this always nagged at me. Why, if auxiliary verbs are appended, is there a past participle tense rather than a past participle mood? I was never given a straight answer, always evasive responses.
"The subjunctive is a special case. English is replete with special cases."
"We only call it a subjunctive so that Spanish-speakers can relate to the various verb forms more easily."
"Calling something a subjunctive is just a convenient hold-over from Latin. Really, it's all just conditionals."
Sometimes college is really frustrating.
If you're talking about the English language I would say not. English has such an inconsistent orthography and very little grammar to speak of (it only has two tenses for instance). I would say poor spelling and grammar are indicative of having a poor memory for all the idiosyncrasies of English rather than anything else.
Hear Hear..or is it Here Here? ..lol
Originally posted by Poison GodmachineCall it what you like, English does have a conjugated subjunctive mood, however it has mostly faded from view because in most persons it looks like an indicative (the dead giveaway is usually the tense - a past indicative will always refer to the past!). You're probably right that it's used less in English than say French, but even French only uses it in certain situations, not in every subordinate clause under the sun. What English doesn't have is a conditional mood, and its meaning is expressed by means of subjunctives and auxiliaries. For example, in the following:
All the talk of the subjunctive in this thread is quite interesting and I am quite intrigued by nemesio's definition of a "tense." I will definitely do some reading on the universally accepted definition.
I was taught in col ...[text shortened]... ionals."
Sometimes college is really frustrating.
1. "If I were rich, I would buy a big house."
the verbs in bold are past subjunctive, and are used to convey a conditional meaning.
The English subjunctive isn't a borrowing from Romance languages either - it has its cousins in other Germanic languages. My example would translate into German (which uses the subjunctive much more than English) as follows:
2. "Wenn ich reich wäre, würde ich ein großes Haus kaufen."
The subjunctive ('Konjunktiv' is German) is used in exactly the same way as in 1. - the only differences between the structure of 1. and 2. are in word order.
In answer to your question about why it's 'past tense' and not 'past mood', 'tense' refers to time (though the 'past subjunctive' isn't really a past tense, it's just called that because it looks like a past tense). Another mood in English is the imperative, which has either a present or a future meaning, eg 'Stop that now!' vs 'Remember to take the dog for a walk tomorrow'.
Knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation. Those are the six levels of thought, with knowledge being the easiest, and evaluation being the hardest. I guess spelling and grammar would fall mostly under knowledge, the easiest level. Maybe, maybe not?
Originally posted by nemesioYes and no. True, English uses a lot more different words. Other languages make up for this by other mechanisms.
English has more words in common vocabulary (not including medical jargon and the like) than any other language (I think...).
German, for instance (my native language), makes up words (nouns and verbs mainly) on the fly, by concatenating other ones. This can be used to the point of absurdity (or play on words, you decide): "Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänskajütenschlüsselringanhänger" consists of "Donau" (Danube, the river), "Dampf" (steam), "Schiff" (ship),
"Fahrt" (travel), "Gesellschaft" (society), "Kapitän" (Captain), "Kajüte" (cabin), "Schlüssel" (key), "Ring" (ring), "Anhänger" (tag), means "the tag to the keyring of the cabin of the (a) captain of the Danube steamship travel society" and is a perfect word every german speaker would easily understand. Still, you won't find it in any dictionary.
Wolf
Originally posted by bbarrWhy not? Just define intelligence by IQ and ascribe correspondingly less meaning to it in general conversation. Of course, nothing is accomplished this way, but I don't see anything accomplished in all of the social science journals my mum had to read to become a certified teacher.
Perhaps we ought to define it as that which is measured by tests of IQ. Then we can do some social science.
Originally posted by royalchickenMaybe she should have used them on yer backside every now and again. That would have been an accomplishment.😉
Why not? Just define intelligence by IQ and ascribe correspondingly less meaning to it in general conversation. Of course, nothing is accomplished this way, but I don't see anything accomplished in all of the social science journals my mum had to read to become a certified teacher.