Subjunctive mood ‘were’ has no tense

What you need to know:

  • But be careful. For the rule adds the vital rider that this is done only with regard to the simple present tense. With that in mind, take the following headline on page 26 of the Sunday Standard’s edition of March 22, 2015: “Kosgey non-committal despite pressure that he joins new outfit”.
  • In short, “join” remains in the infinitive (except that the preposition “to”, which accompanies all English infinitives, has been elided in order to facilitate the flow of words). That is what my Nairobi clothier —a good-natured gentleman of Indo-Pakistani origin— expresses in a roundabout manner whenever he tells me: “Philip, I must to go”.
  • Yet “I must to go” translates the French infinitive Je dois aller more literally and more accurately than it translates the terribly convoluted subjunctive form Il faut que j’aille (“it is necessary that I go”), in which the verb form “go” is both infinitive and subjunctive.

Ordinarily, the verb “were” follows only we, you and they, namely, only the plural forms of the first, second and third person pronouns.

Yet note the sentence “I would be extremely careful if I were you”. In that formation, the verb “were” has followed the first person singular pronoun “I”. How come?

For one thing only, that formulation is not ordinary. In such a usage, the verb “were” is not a past tense. Indeed, it does not belong to any tense at all. It belongs only to what grammarians call a “mood”, namely, that form of a verb which expresses, not a done action, but only a doubt, a supposition, a mere wish.

In our example, the mood is called subjunctive. From the Latin verb subjungere (meaning “to add to”), the subjunctive is that form of a verb used to indicate that the content of a clause or the whole sentence expresses only a wished or supposed or doubted action. It says: “If I were you...” But I am not you.

I am merely imagining how things might turn out should Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde swop their bodies. English has dropped practically all subjunctive expressions, but only in form, not in content. In conjugation, the subjunctive merely drops the preposition “to” from the infinitive.

To conjugate is to give a verb a form in agreement with the grammatical number, tense and often gender of the noun or pronoun which controls the verb. In English, the commonest conjugation rule is to add an “s” to the verb whenever the controlling noun or pronoun is a third person singular one.

BE CAREFUL

But be careful. For the rule adds the vital rider that this is done only with regard to the simple present tense. With that in mind, take the following headline on page 26 of the Sunday Standard’s edition of March 22, 2015: “Kosgey non-committal despite pressure that he joins new outfit”.

I repeat that, although, in that expression, the infinitive “to join” is expressed in the third person singular (“joins”), that is impossible because the simple present remains the tense. Yet the action (the “joining”) has not taken place, not in any real tense. It remains a mere possibility. That is why it cannot be conjugated.

In short, “join” remains in the infinitive (except that the preposition “to”, which accompanies all English infinitives, has been elided in order to facilitate the flow of words). That is what my Nairobi clothier —a good-natured gentleman of Indo-Pakistani origin— expresses in a roundabout manner whenever he tells me: “Philip, I must to go”.

He is translating directly from his Indo-Pakistani mother-tongue, in which, because it belongs to the great Indo-European family, the original subjunctive form remains paramount.

Yet “I must to go” translates the French infinitive Je dois aller more literally and more accurately than it translates the terribly convoluted subjunctive form Il faut que j’aille (“it is necessary that I go”), in which the verb form “go” is both infinitive and subjunctive.