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A Word, Please: Your conversations may be in a subjunctive mood

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One of my favorite things about the subjunctive is that people who know nothing about it — who’ve never even heard the term — use it with great skill all the time.

“In 2010, the Institute of Geriatric Medicine recommended that every elderly patient receive an individualized follow-up plan.”

The person who wrote this probably wasn’t striving to correctly use the subjunctive mood. Yet this is a shining example.

Notice how the subject “patient” pairs with the verb “receive.” That’s subjunctive mood. In a plain-vanilla indicative sentence, a third-person singular subject like “patient” would get a verb conjugated in the third-person singular: The patient receives. The man walks. The team strives. Ruth goes. Notice how the verbs all end with an S.

But the subjunctive mood doesn’t use those conjugations that end with S. So in the subjunctive, it’s: The patient receive. The man walk. The team strive. Ruth go.

Obviously, those are wrong when they stand alone. But that’s your clue as to when the subjunctive kicks in.

It’s recommended that the patient receive. I demand that the man walk. Might we suggest that the team strive? It’s crucial that Ruth go.

See how those qualifiers tacked on the beginning make the verb conjugations work? That’s the essence of the subjunctive mood, which is used in conditions contrary to fact including suppositions, wishes, demands and commands, suggestions, proposals, and statements of necessity.

Whenever your subject and verb are working in one of these contrary-to-fact contexts, that’s the subjunctive.

Technically, to form the subjunctive in the present tense, you just use the “base form” of the verb — the uninflected form that’s identical to the infinitive. But as you saw above, for regular verbs such as receive, walk and realize, this is as simple as just dropping the S.

But notice those verb forms that end in S are always third-person singular — the patient, the man, Ruth. In other cases, though, the subjunctive is even easier.

I receive. We walk. Joe and Jane strive. You go.

In everything but the third-person singular, regular verbs don’t end with an S anyway. So there’s no difference between the subjunctive and the indicative. “I receive” in the indicative doesn’t change in “It is recommended I receive.” “We walk” in the indicative is the same form as in the subjunctive “I insist that we walk.” And so on. Unless you’re talking about a he, she or it, the verb doesn’t change at all. Nothing could be easier than that.

English’s irregular verb “be” works basically the same way.

I am. It is imperative that I be. You are. It is imperative that you be. She is. It is imperative that she be. And so on. Again, you just replace the conjugated verb with the base form.

So far, everything we’ve covered deals with only present-tense verbs. In that past tense, the subjunctive gets even easier because really it only affects one verb: be. The simple past tense of “be” is always either “was” or “were.” I was. He was. She was. We were. You were. They were. To form the subjunctive in the past tense, you just use “were” in every instance.

I wish I were taller. If only he were here. Suppose it were true.

As if all that weren’t easy enough, consider this: The major grammar and style books never say that you have to use the subjunctive or even that you should.

The subjunctive mood has been waning for centuries, which is why it sometimes sounds like pirate talk. In modern times, you can choose between “It’s imperative that he be there when we arrive” and “It’s imperative that he is there when we arrive.”

So according to the major texts, you can use whichever you think sounds best. Be there anything easier than that?

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JUNE CASAGRANDE is author of “It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.

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