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Is the past subjunctive form native to your dialect of English?

would you find it more natural to say...

  • If I were to carry out an attack...

    Votes: 9 90.0%

  • If I was to carry out an attack...

    Votes: 1 10.0%
  • Total voters
    10
ebola?

ebola?

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If you're not familiar with this verb tense, there's an explanation here:
corresponding wikipedia article

For example, would you find it more natural to say,
1. If I were to carry out an attack on the capitol, I would employ VX nerve gas or
2. If I was to carry out an attack on the capitol, I would employ VX nerve gas.

If you find 1 more natural to say, then you use the past subjunctive.

ebola
 
Last edited by a moderator:
So I teach English to Korean students some of the time. Is it acceptable for me to count sentences like example number 2 as incorrect (taking off 'points' from their homework), suggesting instead speech like that found in example 1?

ebola
 
No, neither are incorrect.

your example is confusing because it omits (and hides) the relative tense. both "was to" and "were to" can apply equally to past, present and future. the clearer examples in your wiki link a little further down clarify when "was" and when "were" are more appropriate.
 
^^^^^
fixed (to the extent that is possible; can a mod please fix this?) (fucking hell, god damn it :P)
...
L2r said:
your example is confusing because it omits (and hides) the relative tense.
Click to expand...

My knowledge of explicit grammar is actually quite poor; can you give an example using the subjunctive that reveals explicitly this "relative tense"?

ebola
 
everyone knows you're a mouthbreather, ebola ;) and between you and me, i'm making this shit up as i go along. but from your own link is the following

Distinguishing from past indicative after ifConfusion sometimes arises in the case of if clauses containing an ordinary past indicative was. Compare:

1.If he was in class yesterday, he learned it.
2.If he was/were in class today, he would be learning it.
The first if clause contains a simple past indicative, referring to past time (it is not known whether or not the circumstance in fact took place). The second, however, expresses a counterfactual circumstance connected with the present, and therefore contains (or may contain) a past subjunctive.

Since in sentences like the second example were is preferred in formal registers, failure to distinguish between the two types sometimes leads were to be inappropriately substituted for was in sentences like the first. This is an example of hypercorrection.

This hypercorrection of was to were can also occur in cases where if does not express a condition, but serves as an alternative to whether in indirect questions. Some examples of this usage are quite old:

Johnny asked me if I were afraid. (Barbara in Night of the Living Dead, 1968)
... he asked me if I were about to return to London ... (Mary Shelley, The Last Man, 1833)
He asked me if I were a Priest. (The Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine Vol. 3, December 1824)
Click to expand...

so to answer your question, (i think) such examples would be...

(past) If I was carrying out last weeks attack on the capitol, I would have employed VX nerve gas.
or
(present or future) If our plans were executed and I were to carry out an attack on the capitol, I would employ VX nerve gas.


i might be missing the point, your original post made me progressively more crosseyed the longer i thought about it.
 
Mods can't fix titles anymore? ;)

Ebola, relative tense can be explained as follows:

Relative tense is a tense that refers to a time in relation to a contextually determined temporal reference point, regardless of the latter’s temporal relation to the moment of utterance.
Click to expand...

From here: http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsRelativeTense.htm

L2R, your explanation works aside from that "week's" would be possessive. ;) The grammar and syntax appear correct in your example.
 
wow, and i'm normally quite bad at this stuff (psst, i got the term "relative tense" by googling "temporal tense!").

are you sure about the possessive? i thought an apostrophe on such a word would only work as an "is" contraction.
 
L2R said:
are you sure about the possessive? i thought an apostrophe on such a word would only work as an "is" contraction.
Click to expand...
that's pronouns. but not all pronouns. indefinite pronouns can be made possessive with an apostrophe. unfortunately.
 
ok, yeah i was thinking of the rule with "it". :( ... well i told you i was crap.
 
mariposa said:
Mods can't fix titles anymore?
Click to expand...

I don't mod second opinion...
...
Thanks L2R and Mariposa. Okay, my examples were meant to be pretty clear counterfactual hypotheticals, and I think that the use of the past subjunctive in them (and the auxiliary verb, "would") makes such more clear. It seems that in general, relative tenses depend on contextual cues to assign temporal reference, and here, ". . .I would employ vx nerve gas" should clearly assign this reference to the dependent clause containing "if".

ebola
 
^you mean rather than "i would have..."?

umm... not essentially. since you were making a hypothetical, you could be referring to any relative tense in that you put yourself there. like "in [her shoes/that time/another context] i would do x..." You aren't in those circumstance, but you verbally project there, making it sound like present tensive.

so it (your examples) really remains unclear. :p
 
L2R said:
wow, and i'm normally quite bad at this stuff (psst, i got the term "relative tense" by googling "temporal tense!").

are you sure about the possessive? i thought an apostrophe on such a word would only work as an "is" contraction.
Click to expand...

The apostrophe as to "week's" refers to the singular possessive. "weeks" without an apostrophe represents a plural noun.
 
I read the second one with a Southern accent and it made more sense

I dont know what that means but I would say 1
 
shimazu said:
I read the second one with a Southern accent and it made more sense

I dont know what that means but I would say 1
Click to expand...

ebola, this is what i was talking about in IM yesterday. #2 stylistically sounds more lowbrow/colloquial/uneducated. i still think the sound of "if i was.." is subconsciously associating with really stupid things like "see yous".
 
I use both actually... it depends on how it "flows" to me...

If I was going to bang you, I'd stick it in your pooper.
If I where going to commit democide, I'd round up all the emo boys and machine gun them.
 
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