By Subjunctives

Copying myself from another thread: Yes, you can look at it that way and that's a nice justification. CJ's example: Mozart died before he had completed the Requiem Mass. can be read as: Mozart died before THE HYPOTHETICAL ACTION IN WHICH he would have completed the...

Yes, you can look at it that way and that's a nice justification. Using CJ's example: Mozart died before he had completed the Requiem Mass.can be read as: Mozart died before THE HYPOTHETICAL ACTION IN WHICH he would have completed the Requiem Mass.

Yes, but what do they mean? In many of them: --------- Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6, by Thomas Moore ... two of them officers of our brigade, in consequence of which cards were exchanged, and two duels were to have been fought the next morning. ...--------- they mean: were...

I wanted to say subjunctive. It's a really difficult topic and as you can see I was so confused I even misspelled the word. I wish there were no subjunctives.

I think you mean "Doesn't suggest govern the subjunctive?", and the answer is "Yes, but only in its definition as offering advice -- not in its other meanings, such as the one being discussed here."CJ

I absolutely agree that would and had CAN go together particularly when expressing/stressing a past event which also ended in the past - it is after all merely the combination of subjunctive + past perfect. The following case sounds fine to my Midwest American (long lived in English)...

.If I were there, I would buy that for you.Use the subjunctive form here in this conditional sentence, which states a condition contrary to fact (the fact is, you are not there)..

-------if clauses—the traditional rules. According to traditional rules, you use the subjunctive to describe an occurrence that you have presupposed to be contrary to fact if I were ten years younger, if America were still a British Colony. http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/061.html---------...

I would guess that the writer intended Optilang's 2nd version: 1. ...whether any changes would, on balance, be for the better. But "for better or worse", which has a subjunctive implication (i.e. "be it for better or worse"), as in the matrimonial phrase, seems to...

"Should" can be used with "if" to indicate a hypothetical future action, or a past action that might have happened but didn't, without any "ought to"/"supposed to" implication (I think this is a subjunctive use, but grammatical terminology is not my...