The use of The Subjunctive Mood in the works of English and American authors

 

The 3^d chapter is my practical investigation of the problem of the use of different forms of the Subjunctive Mood by English and American writers. For this purpose I chose the following stories included into the textbook by Merkulova which we studied during our 3 year, there are: «A Marriage of Convenience», «The Luncheon», «The Verger» by S. Maugham, «Jerusalem the Golden» by M. Drabble, «One Pair of Hands» by M. Dickens, «Shopping for One» by A. Cassidy, «A Start in Life» by A. Brookner, «The Lord of the Rings» by J.R.R. Tolkien as well as our home reading material «Love story» by Erick Segal.

All in all I have collected 62 examples on the use of the Subjunctive Mood in the above literature.

As far as the Conditional clauses are concerned they are represented by the following cases:

Refering to the Future – Present Tense

e.g. If I were a sentimentalist, and cared enough about Harvard to hang a photograph on the wall, it would not be of Winthrop House, or Mem Church, but of Dillon. Dillon Field House.

Refering to the Past Tense

e.g. If you were to tell any of a dozen girls at Tower Court, Wellesley, that Oliver Barrett IV had been a young lady daily for three weeks and had not slept with her, they would surely have laughed and severely questioned the femininity of the girl involved.

Refering to the mixed type

e.g. If I did not want to marry, do you imagine that I should have spent three days reading love letters from women I have never set eyes on?

There are also examples when the unreal condition is expressed with the help of inversion:

e.g. What inducement would there be for her to give up her accustomed life to accompany in exile a man of forty-nine who is by no means a beauty?

Some sentences show the use of the Subjunctive Mood introduced by as if, as though in adverbial clauses of comparison depicting the action both:

- simultaneous with the principal clause:

e.g. It was as if her exigent temperament required immediate results.

- prior to it:

e.g. Except white wine,» she proceeded as though I had not spoken.

It worth mentioning that the verb «to be» in found in two forms as «was»:

e.g. It’s not as if I was a bettin’ man.

and (what looks more Subjunctive) «were» for the person in singular:

e.g. The manager stared at him as though he were a prehistoric monster.

A number of examples are characteristic of emotional «should» usage to express surprise or indignation of the speaker about the real facts:

e.g. It’s real, but why in hell should I subject it to some arbitrary test?

Very few are sentences with the verb «wish»:

e.g. I wish I coulda seen it.

No examples were found on the use of the Subjunctive Mood in adverbial clauses of concession; attribute clauses which modify the noun of the principal clause «time» and adverbial clauses of purpose.

 

 

Conclusion

 

Having learned points of views of different grammarians about the Subjunctive Mood, and also about its usage, I can say that this problem is really difficult and needs solving.

Nevertheless, the problem of the Subjunctive Mood in English is really interesting. It is discussed by a lot of linguists not only of England, but Russia, Germany and other countries.

Doing my work, I found out, that English and Russian grammarians see the problem of the Subjunctive Mood in a different way. Different linguists present various quantities of Moods and give them different names.

So, I’ve managed to get acquainted with different theories on the problem of the Subjunctive Mood definition, to consider the main cases of its usage and to learn that the same verbal mood phenomena can be treated differently depending on the basic point in understanding what the Subjunctive Mood is. All these theories only prove the fact that the language is the reflection of variety of forms of human life which is manifested in the saying: so many men, so many minds.

So, before starting to collect the material on the use of the Subjunctive Mood in the works of English and American writers for chapter 3 I had expected there would be quite a lot of examples for some reasons: firstly, because it is fiction, secondly, there are some but not one author, I was going to analyze the works of with their own peculiarities in writing: their own lexical and stylistic devices, their own vocabulary. But the number of the examples I have found came as a surprise to me as it did not meet my expectations.

As it turned out the majority of authors prefer using different forms of the conditional clauses, they make 72,6%.

The second place belongs to the quantity of the Subjunctive Mood forms introduced by the conjunction as if /as though in adverbial clauses of comparison and manner, they make 14,5%.

The sentences to express people’s emotions with «why should» occupy the 3^d place, they constitute 8%.

The 4^th place 3% that is taken by the sentences where the Subjunctive Mood is introduced by the verb «wish».

And the last (but not least in importance) place – 1,6% belongs to subject clauses inserting the Subjunctive Mood according to the formula:

It be A ….

Graphically I can show it in the following way:

The use of the Subjunctive Mood in the works of English and American authors:

 

It should be understood that I do not claim that the results obtained by us are embracing all the English and American literature, but I can express an idea that they may be characteristic of it.

The authors can very well do with the Indicative Mood and sometimes Imperative in their creative activities not using supposition, wishes, sorrow and other emotional shades of meaning so much, as I had first expected. May be it is due to the fact that the stories I considered for investigation are based on modern life reality.

It is not necessary to say that our contemporary life is deprived of that romantic touch of sentimentality which can be expressed with the help of the Subjunctive Mood. But I do hope that the forms of the Subjunctive Mood which I discovered in the works of modern English and American writers will be of interest to our students.

As far as my interest of this diploma paper is concerned I am guided by the words of Pascal who said: «People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they themselves have discovered than by those which have come into the minds of others».

 

 

Bibliography

 

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11. В. Виноградов «Русский язык» Москва, 1947

12. Erick Segal «Love story»

13. M. Drabble «Jerusalem the Golden»

14. M. Dickens «One Pair of Hands»

15. A. Cassidy «Shopping for One»

16. A. Brookner «A Start in Life»

17. J.R.R. Tolkien «The Lord of the Rings»

18. Yelena M. Merkulova «English Reading, writing and conversation» St. Petersburg «SOYUZ» 2004