Search results for 'tag:Subjunctives tag:Universities' matching tags 'Subjunctives' and 'Universities'

Re: The Coca Cola company

Cool Breeze — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 07:56:54 GMT

MaverickK
The correct answer is D. But I still can not understand why is A incorrect?

I think you have encountered a grammar "expert" who has very strong opinions about correct usage and little understanding of anything or anyone who disagrees with him. I once met a British teacher of English, an Oxford University graduate, who thought this is the only way to do it was wrong. In his opinion only this is the only way of doing it was correct. Everyone is entitled to his opinion, of course.

Any good grammar book and/or grammar expert will tell you that after the verb demand both the present subjunctive and should are correct in a that clause:

He demanded that I gravel the sidewalk. He demanded that I should gravel the sidewalk.

Re: A question..

Grammar Geek — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:39:16 GMT

Well, I have two thoughts, neither of which relate to being deaf.

You're at an engineering school. I don't know of very many engineers who value their writing skills - a few, to be sure, but not many. As an alum of that other engineering school in upstate New York with and R and and I in its name, I have seen this first hand. My fellow students were thrilled to be able to graduate without having to write papers. This helps ensure my job security, so I don't object.

Second, you're at a univeristy now. They expect you to know grammar. Working with you on writing skills is an appropriate university-level class. If you feel you need remedial work in grammar, then I would approach the writing lab (if they have one) and ask for recommendations. If they don't have resources for you there, then the Online Writing Lab from Purdue (google OWL and Purdue together and you'll get there) had a lot of really good resoures.

And okay, here's a third thought. You probably are burned out. I expect RIT is a lot like RPI. For the first time, your classes are actually hard. For the first time in your academic career, you have to actually work to keep up, let alone be excellent. It's exhausting. Perhaps you can take a lighter course load next fall and get to regroup a bit.

Being an excellent writer has much more to do with clairty of thinking than knowing whether a sentence requries the subjunctive, so don't get too hung up on this stuff.

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: "English Phrasal Verbs in Use" by Cambridge University Press:

Marius Hancu — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 10:14:55 GMT

AmE
Several verbs (suggest, recommend, ask, etc) require the subjunctive after them:
I suggested she go to the library.

BrE
The subjunctive is avoided in such constructions, and the should + infinitive is used:
I suggested she should go to the library.
or ordinary present and past tenses:
I suggested she went to the library.

See: Swan, Practical English Usage, should (in subordinate clauses) and subjunctive.

Re: in the subjunctive

Cool Breeze — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 21:25:46 GMT

Hi Believer

Were is a subjunctive in your sentences. This is probably the most common mood of the verb after as if and as though:

He speaks as if / as though he knew all about it.
He spoke as if / as though he had known all about it.

However, it is possible to say:

You look as if / as though you are tired.

In the above sentence are isn't a subjunctive. In spoken English, especially in America, it is more common to say:

You look like you are tired.

British grammarians in particular used to consider like incorrect in sentences like the one above because a clause followed it. There may still be a few grey-haired professors at Oxford University who object to it.

Cheers
CB

Re: It's time+simple past tense

Marius Hancu — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 12:05:33 GMT

It is time you shift
uses the subjunctive shift, as with require/demand verbs:
It is required that you shift
which has the (mainly) BrE equivalent of
It is required that you should shift
(see Swan, Practical English Usage, Subjunctive, Should)

I think your version could be also valid, but suggesting less of a mandatory/presssing requirement and more of a doubt.

Both versions are used at Google, with yours being more frequent (and present on a university site here):

-----
Perhaps it's time you shift your focus off of yourself and
this incident which most rescuers/volunteers encounter and onto the
greater good of a difficult cause.

http://www.planetfeedback.com/index.php?level2=blog_viewpost&topic_id=285690
-----
-------
If you love what you do, if your business lights you up, you wish you
could attract more clients--but you're confused about marketing and
you just hate to sell, then it's time you shifted the way you think
about getting clients...

http://www.uh.edu/academics/dce/gen/conf.html
--------

Re: Mixed Conditionals (Is this allowed?)

MrPedantic — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 01:20:21 GMT

Anonymous wrote:
Hello.
I came across a couple of sites, and I was wondering if you could verify the authenticity of their contents.

http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/IF8.cfm
http://www.englishpage.com/conditional/mixedconditional.html

The pages look ok. The first site should mention that the subjunctive 'were' is standard in place of 'was' in the first and third person singular:

1. If MrQ were here, you wouldn't have done that.

Though you hear this use of 'were' slightly less often in BrE than in AmE.

The last set of examples on the second site don't sound like mixed conditionals to me. They seem like standard type 2s. But maybe other members will have other opinions.

2. If his father hadn't lost all his money, John would study at the university.

This structure (IF past perfect, main clause 'would' + base form) isn't incorrect, with the right context:

3. If his father hadn't throttled him at birth, MrQ would be prime minister now.

The present progressive is used where the context requires a sense of a continuing action:

4. If I'd braked sooner, I wouldn't now be paying $300 for repairs.

MrP

sunbjunctive....again!!! I'm sorry :-(

fab54 — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 00:06:08 GMT

Hi everyone,

I know that questions about the subjunctive have been asked a bizillion times, and I thought I had understood it but I always manage somehow to read something and get confused again!!

I know that there are a lot of posts about the subject and I have looked at them carefully but I didn't really find an answer.

I was reading a website about the subjunctive (english/spanish) and I read the following sentences

1) His ambition is that his son become president

2) His father approves that she study in the university

At first glance they seemed "natural" to me, but then if I replace the verbs to become and to study by to be, I get

1) His ambition is that his son be president

2) His father approves that she be in the university

And this sentences seem highly unnatural to me.....I would put "is" instead of "be"

What do you think?

Thanks

PS: The webpage were I found those sentences is: http://www.languageguide.org/espanol/grammar/subjunctive.jsp

(I am not advertising, I am just giving the reference)

Re: Hardest Language To Teach?

Guest — Sun, 15 May 2005 01:13:12 GMT

Hey Dex 17,

I'm so glad you told that 14 year old all of that. I was wanting to after reading that racist drivel. I couldn't agree more, intelligence is not really race specific as it is people specific, and even then it's touch and go. There is a reason why they dropped that system of testing years ago from the UK anyway.

What I would like to say is that language learning is a funny thing. Most people pick up their first language until they reach fluently very easily (even if they're not that literate, grammatically sound, whatever!), however when it comes to the second language everyone's moaning and complaining about hard it is. Then after a few more years of learning (if they haven't given up) they'll say it was so easy and they couldn't believe they couldn't see it before.

What gives me the right to say this generalisation? Well for one I'm human, that can't be too different from you folks, the other although I'm Scottish/Chinese (Yes, you heard me family came over to Scotland 3 generations ago) so I've come into contact with English and Chinese, also I'm doing French and Japanese at university. That is difficult but only because I didn't grow up with them.

Most people have put fair points down but one thing I have to dispel the myth about (if it's not already been done) is the fact that everyone says that Chinese is so difficult. I personally believe it is not the hardest language to learn (if such one exists). The entirety of the language consists of memorising - through inculcating everyday, Chinese characters.

That means:

- No subjunctive - perfect, imperfect, pluperfect, present
- No spelling - spending years sounding a word out and learning the rules
- No declensions
- No agreements with adjectives (or the past participle in French)

Grammatically you can probably see it's as easy as pie, if not as natural as pie for people who are not English because it uses a subject-verb-object approach. According to my friend only in complex/literary/classical Chinese does the syntax/grammar change spectacularly from English. Unlike Japanese, French, German, etc.

And another thing: Yes Chinese does NOT have an alphabet but as has been explained before different parts of the character will indicate the pronunciation e.g.
? - after you've learnt something like the first few hundred you'll see this just as easily (any dialect of Chinese strangely enough as that is works the same way - well at least Mandarin and Cantonese) as you see a cognate in French e.g. feuillage (Fr) - foliage (Eng)
If that doesn't work, think of Chinese this way - most verbs are made out of a two-character phrase so if you know one and the context of the sentence is clear....you got it, you'll pronounce the second one without realising it. That has happened to me plenty of times.
Finally, you can guess the meaning and from it find a suitable word from your 'oral vocabulary' to match.
Or guess what??? They use dictionaries too!

Like I know the spelling and pronunciation of EVERY single English word. Aye, right...have another one Dougie.

But yes, it is unnatural to memorise characters to start off with and yes English does not use tones to distinguish syllables - but these are 'surface' reasons preventing someone from learning a very different language. I say don't let it hold you back.

Finally, I don't think ANYONE should really comment on a language, or at all, if they have not been learning the language in question for at least a few proper lessons, if not a few years. Languages are not logical until you learn them so you cannot just predict them from the start. And hey, if 1 billion people in China speak Chinese no problem - why can't you???

Learn another language - I swear it'll change your life.

Simon 18, Scotland

Re: 's' word ending

Mister Micawber — Sat, 18 Dec 2004 09:18:48 GMT

There are no masterstrokes, just a lot of digging. Here's a start:

Berk LM (1999). English syntax: from word to discourse (New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-512353-0), pages 149-150:

Subjunctive Mood

Like the term imperative, the term subjunctive refers to a particular verb form. In Old English, special verb forms existed to communicate non-facts, e.g., wants, hopes, and hypothetical situations. The subjunctive is somewhat weak in Modern English, but there are speakers who use it routinely. In many cases, the subjunctive is a form learned in school or through reading, so it is educated speakers who use it most. The modern subjunctive expresses a variety of deontic meanings.

[N.B. deontic refers to a sense of duty or obligation, of something which is required or desired. Deontic modality is modality that connotes the speaker's

* degree of requirement of
* desire for, or
* commitment to the realization of

the proposition expressed by the utterance.]