In Modal verbs^x, Tenses^x, Subjunctives^x

It's not subjunctive. It's the modal use of need . Modal need can occur in non-assertive contexts. Modals never take the s in the first person singular of the present tense the way non-modal verbs do. In that way they resemble subjunctive forms, which are also missing the s . The...

Taka wrote: Remember, just because the modal verb 'would' appears in the main clause, this doesn't mean that the verb in the if clause must be in the subjunctive if the content of that clause is not presupposed to be false. The above is related to the following example sentence: ...

Yankee wrote: Hi Taka In case you haven't found this yet, here is a link to what the American Heritage Book of English Usage has to say about the subjunctive: http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/061.html Good, Yankee. Thanks for the URL. And I was particularly interested in these parts....

http://www.englishforums.com/English/Pleased/hvdv/Post.htm http://www.englishforums.com/English/Subjunctive/gmkc/Post.htm In both of the above posts, miriam has explained the subjunctive in detail but it's all quite confusing to me. I've studied subjuctive from American Heritage and Columbian...

When we talk about a subjunctive construction, I think it is easier to understand it without the 'inserted clause, I would think' becasue that way one can clearly see the cause-and-effect relationship beteween the conditional clause and the main clasue. 1. If someone tells you that you...

Hello td I'm not an expert or a student of linguistics. But we've had a few discussions about modals on this forum, and I've noticed three things: 1. Speakers of different dialects seem to respond differently to the same modal verb. 2. People's sense of 'tense' in modals seems to vary....

Hello This is a garbage-like posting written by a poor English learner who has been and still now is agonized by subjunctive things which supposedly underlie English collocations. My way of understanding English grammar The English language uses two moods (indicative/subjunctive) and...

This hypothesis appears to account for all the examples given so far by JTT, CJ, and MrP: Sometimes 'could' acts without apparent tense.¹ Sometimes it acts as the past tense of 'can'.² Sometimes we have to know the context, to know which kind of 'could' it is.³ ¹ a) 'Could you open the...

Mr Pedantic wrote: The OED's 'may/might' entry takes us back to Fortiter's thread: 1. If that were true, he would be wearing a nasturtium in his buttonhole. 2. If that was true, why wasn't he wearing a nasturtium in his buttonhole? If we were to apply the logic of earlier posts in...