Search results for 'tag:Present perfect tag:Subjunctives' matching tags 'Present perfect' and 'Subjunctives'

Re: When do we use present perfect subjunctive?

CalifJim — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:28:12 GMT

heloOO
how is present perfect subjunctive used in English?

Very carefully! And very sparingly!

Provided the semantics allow it, the syntax is the same as for the present subjunctive of have, plus the past participle. The present subjunctive, if not the present indicative, usually substitutes, as the subjunctive form sounds too "fussy" to many native speakers.

It is important that he have obtained a license before fishing in this stream.

The demand that the candidate have spent an entire year alone on an island before he may proceed with further survival training is outrageous.

Re: When do we use present perfect subjunctive?

Cool Breeze — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:46:50 GMT

It seems to me that the present perfect subjunctive is used to refer to the past when the present subjunctive is used to refer to the future. In your sentence the subjunctive is due to requires. I don't think many grammarians recognize this verb form, though. I have never heard of it. That doesn't mean I consider it wrong. The few grammatical forms that English has are used in amazingly colourful ways, which makes English such a fascinating (and occasionally inexact) language!

Re: When do we use present perfect subjunctive?

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:16:39 GMT

Here's an example:

"The court is not precluded from deciding this issue, even though the plaintiff did not address it in his appellate brief. The statute requires only that the plaintiff have had the opportunity to address the issue."

When do we use present perfect subjunctive?

heloOO — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:39:45 GMT

Hi, how is present perfect subjunctive used in English?

Re: Native-speaker/native language

Tanit — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:03:57 GMT

Forbes

I remember listening to a radio programme about the varieties of forms of speech in Italy ... They simply change language like they change clothes without worrying about the status of their "home" speech.

There's some truth in that article. My parents, for instance, used to speak in Sardinian (not a dialect, but recognised as an endangered language by the UNESCO) when talking to each other or to their relatives, but they would only speak Italian with my brother and me. I grew up monolingual, and although I can understand Sardinian, I am unable to articulate a sentence that contains more than a few words!

Many people who speak both Italian and their dialect, although able to switch from the first to the second depending on the context, speak a form of Italian that I would classify as regional and sub-standard. I noticed that people from Southern Italy (I have little experience of Northern Italy) who speak also a dialect usually don't speak standard Italian, but a form of language deeply affected by their dialect. Accent is not an issue. I find some grammatical structures odd, as well as the choice of some verb modes, tenses and aspects (ex. past simple versus present perfect, indicative versus subjunctive), and have problems with some vocabulary (let alone idioms, of course). I am usually able to understand the general meaning, though.

Re: Condtitional tense

Avangi — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:28:35 GMT

Anonymous
"If I was on vacation, the last thing I would care about would be if I had/have closed the fridge." Past perfect or present perfect...which one should be used...or both?

This is more interesting than it seems at first blush. My ear says you must use "had." But where is the time reference? I suppose we go by context. You'll be on vacation when you do the caring, so the act of closing / not closing is prior to going on vacation. Probably since you use "If I was on vacation" instead of "If I am on vacation, the vacation would count as past, so past perfect would be in order. (Don't you think it would be more fun to use subjunctive?)

But then what do you use with "If I am on vacation . . . ."? My ear says "will worry." Is that really future? If future goes with present, why can't present go with past? But my ear will not accept "if I have closed the fridge," except with, "If I am on vacation."

Best wishes, - A.

Re: Can you help me?

Kooyeen — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:08:11 GMT

Hmm, you don't have a question right? You are just asking if you can ask? You sure can! Everybody asks questions here. And you can also try the search function to look for old threads (top-right corner). There are already a lot of threads on some topics like present perfect, subjunctives, etc.

And welcome to Englishforums!

Are they OK?

Grammarian-bot — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 20:39:46 GMT

Well if you are stating your answer just on the basis of the use of are in the first sentence then I think you should reconsider your answer since this sentence (is/has been) structured by me. (Which one is correct: "is" or "has been"? I have heard that since is always accompanied by present perfect; my 2 cents on it)

For your second statement, I'd prefer you to consider my previous post. (Since prefer is used, this sentence is in subjunctive mood. Can we use an infinitive "to consider" in subjunctive? )

On second thoughts, I am also skeptical about "to consider" being an infinitive. How do we know whether a "to" used before a verb in a sentence is part of the infinitive or is just a plain preposition?

GB

Re: subjunctive or past conditional

Goodman — Mon, 07 May 2007 23:03:25 GMT

Hi Bokeh,

Becasue of your reply, it made me take a second look at the original question. I also did some research and found this paper written on the subject of Semantic Composition of Subjunctive Conditionals by Michela Ippolito of MIT/TÃ¼bingen University. I am not completely sure if I understood all thwt he wrote, but I do agree whole-heartedly with his view from what I understood. It's obvious that there are several subjunctive moods and conditionals discussed in great legnth which was exactly the reason causing the confusions on this thread. I find it absoulutely useful so I've extracted a small portion which I beleive was related the posted question.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=type+of+subjunctive

michela@alum.mit.edu

3. The Semantic Analysis of Subjunctive Conditionals

In answering the question of what the correct semantic analysis of subjunctive

conditionals is we will raise and answer the following questions too: (1) What is the

difference between indicative an subjunctive conditionals? (2) What is the role of the

past morphology in the composition of the meaning of a subjunctive conditional? (3)

What is the contribution of the second layer of past to the meaning of subjunctive

conditionals? As Iatridou observes, the past morphology in subjunctive conditionals is

not interpreted temporally, as the event of playing baseball in example (2) is supposed

to take place in the future (tomorrow). What follows in this paper is inspired by her

work and by the intuition behind it, i.e. that the temporal morphology we see in modal

constructions actively contributes to the construction of the modal meaning. However,

I depart from her idea that tense morphology has a âcore meaningâ that can apply to

different kinds of entities (i.e. her idea that if it applies to times, it is interpreted

temporally; if it applies to worlds, then it is interpreted modally). My claim is that

tense (aspectual) morphology has a single, definite interpretation: the temporal

(aspectual) one. The way tense morphology contributes to the composition of modal

meaning is by being interpreted in different positions in the structure of a modal

sentence, i.e. either in the restriction or in the nuclear scope of the modal operator.

Recall that I am arguing that accessibility relations are of type <s<i<st>> (where i is

the type for times and s the type for worlds): the notion of accessible world is relative

not only to a world but also to a time so that a world will be accessible if it satisfies

certain conditions with respect to an evaluation world and an evaluation time. The

past that we see in subjunctive conditionals such as If Charlie played baseball

tomorrow, we would lose the game is the morphological realization of a perfect

operator interpreted in the modal domain. I will develop an analysis of the meaning of

subjunctive conditionals and show how it solves the puzzle of the presupposition

projection for subjunctive conditionals discussed in Heim 1992; finally, I will answer

the three questions I raised above.

3.1 Felicity Conditions for Conditionals

Recall what the puzzle was. The antecedent of a subjunctive conditional can be

inconsistent with the common ground, and consequently, the set of worlds the modal

operator quantifies over cannot be restricted to the worlds in the context set (the

epistemically accessible worlds) (see (19) below). Furthermore, this set cannot be the

empty context (W) either because, if it were, we would expect conditionals with

antecedents with presuppositions to be infelicitous since the modal base does not have

the right entailments. However, this is incorrect: subjunctive conditionals whose

antecedents have presuppositions are felicitous, which means that the antecedentâs

presuppositions can be entailed by the modal base (cf. (20)). In fact, they must (cf.

(21)).

(19) Jack is dead. If he were alive, he would come to the ceremony.

(20) Jack smokes. If he quit smoking tomorrow, which he wonât, he would run

the marathon.

(21) Jack quit smoking last year. If he quit smoking tomorrow, he would run

the marathon.

Heim 1992 concluded that the only way to reconcile these two requirements of

subjunctive conditionals is to stipulate that the modal base is neither the set of

epistemically accessible worlds (the main context) nor the totally empty modal base

W, but the (largest) set of worlds obtained by suspending all the speakerâs

assumptions except the presuppositions of the antecedent, which then remain entailed.

However, I showed above that this stipulation does not work for all subjunctive

conditionals: in particular, it does not account for the difference between one-past

subjunctive conditionals and mismatched two-pasts subjunctive conditionals, as

shown below.

(22) Jack died last year.

a. #If he came to the ceremony tomorrow, he would be proud of Sally.

b. If he had come to the graduation tomorrow, he would have been proud

of Sally.

We are back where we were: how is the set of worlds to which modal operators apply

selected? Clearly, the felicity conditions for indicative, one-past and two-pasts

subjunctive conditionals are all different. But what is the difference and how is the

difference determined?

It seems correct to hold that for a sentence to be felicitously uttered in the

context c, c must entail the presuppositions of . In the common ground theory of

presuppositions developed by Stalnaker (1973, 1974, 1975), the common ground is

the set of all the propositions known or assumed to be true by all the participants in

the conversation, and the context set is the set of worlds where all the propositions in

the common ground are true. Assertions are meant to update the common ground. If

the assertion is made and accepted, the common ground expands and the context set

shrinks. Thus, if a sentence presupposes p, then asserting requires that the

common ground entail p, i.e. it requires that the speaker assume that it is true in the

common ground that p, modulo accommodation.10 It is explicit in Heimâs context

change semantics (and implicit in Stalnakerâs idea of a derived context) that a clause

(that is to say, the structural description of a clause at the level of Logical Form) is not

always evaluated with respect to the context of utterance: the context with respect to

which a structure is evaluated depends on the level of embedding of the clause, the

most unembedded clause being interpreted with respect to the main (utterance)

context. We can then reformulate the principle above: what is responsible for the

felicity of a sentence is not whether its presuppositions are entailed by the utterance

context but whether they are entailed by the evaluation context (which may be

identical to the utterance time in some cases). Call this principle PREP.

10 Stalnaker (1972, 1973, 1974, 1978, 1988, 1998). Kartunnen (1974), Lewis (1979), Heim (1982,

1983, 1992), Thomason (1990) and von Fintel (2000) also contributed important work in the tradition

of the common ground theory of presuppositions.

3.2 What Looks Like Past is Perfect

I propose that the past morphology we see in subjunctive conditionals in English is

the morphological realization of a perfect operator. The English perfect, and

especially the present perfect, has raised a lot of interest in the linguistic literature

because of the properties that distinguish it from both the present and the simple past

tense. McCoard (1978) offers a survey of possible theories of the perfect: the current

relevance theory, the indefinite past theory, the embedded past theory and, finally, the

theory that he argues to be the best, the Extended Now theory. Very briefly, according

11 The claim that the presuppositions of the antecedent of a conditional have to be entailed by the

context is a standard claim of a dynamic approach to meaning (Heim 1992). However, we will see later

that the issue is more intricate and I will have more to say on this topic later on in the paper.

Re: have car towed

Doll — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 19:58:36 GMT

I think you can't understand causative form because have confuses you, right?

I have had my car towed (causative form.Nothing wrong with this.First have belongs to causative form, second have shows that the sentence is present perfect)to the new apartment.(They have towed my car in front of my new apartment.You know police tows cars..)
If I have my car towed do I need to be present to hand off the car?(The usage of causative form in conditional sentences.If they tow my car do I need to be present...?)
The police showed up and recommended I have my car towed because they thought the radiator had been cracked and was leaking(Causative form in a subjunvtive sentence.The police showed up and recomended that I should have my car towed because...)

The trooper insisted that I (should) have my car towed away, but when the tow truck came and it was not a platform truck,.....(Subjunctive again)
By the time we return to Baton Rouge and I have my car towed (and they tow my car )to Pep Boys,

Does it they still seem strange?