Subjunctive(?): not critical that

[Dennis R. Preston]

Well, I must be a poor reader. I thought you said that Spanish took
its subjunctive seriously and that the evidence you gave was that
your Spanish teacher spent a lot of time on it and tested you on it
extensively. I'm still having trouble not understanding that.

dInIs
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>Subject:      Re: Subjunctive(?): not critical that
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>On Sat, 22 Mar 2008 at 16:40:43 Zulu minus 4 Dennis Preston
><preston at MSU.EDU> wrote:
>
>This entire message assumes that the subjunctive
>is intact in Spanish and apparently used by all,
>unfortunately on the basis of a single Spanish
>teacher's instructions! (My favorite bit of
>sociolinguistics for quite some time is is "How
>seriously? My Spanish teacher...."). That would
>equate studying the drift of living languages by
>asking what their teachers taught. In fact, the
>Spanish subjunctive it is rapidly disappearing in
>nearly all varieties of spoken Spanish. Good
>riddance!
>
>This was in response to my comment:
>
>Spanish is a language that takes the subjunctive seriously.  How
>seriously?  My high school Spanish teacher had us spend several weeks
>studying nothing but the subjunctive, ending with the longest take-home
>exam I have ever had.  It was at the end of those weeks that I first
>felt that I spoke Spanish, because I could now say so much more than
>before the exercise started.
>
>My response:
>
>What I said was that I personally felt that I was beginning to
>master Spanish once I had emerged from that weeks-long torture
>session on the subjunctive.  Specifically once we ended that
>sesstion we went into Spanish history, and I discovered while doing
>homework assignments and essay exams that I could express myself in
>Spanish much better and with a wider range of possibilities now that
>I knew the (textbook) rules of the subjunctive.  This was MY
>conclusion, not my teacher's.
>
>>From Spanish history we went into the literature of the Siglo de Oro
>and the Generacion de 98, so I can't really claim to concentrated on
>contemporary spoken Spanish.  And in fact if the subjunctive is
>"rapidly disappearing" in present-day Spanish, then it must have
>still been alive and kicking back in 1962.
>
>In any event I was using century-old literary Spanish usage to make
>a point about the why? of the subjunctive mood, not about
>contemporary Spanish usage.
>
>Also I stated:  the so-called *subjunctive mood* in English is not
>a true subjunctive but rather a grammatical idiosyncracy which is rarely
>used to distinguish two moods of a verb, and should be referred to as a
>*pseudo-subjunctive*.
>
>Since you say "good riddance" to the subjunctive, you should be
>applauding my statement.
>
>If the subjunctive is rapidly disappearing from spoken Spanish, what
>is taking its place?  Not aspect, since the Spanish verb has only
>two aspects and one of them is about as rare as proper (i.e.
>prescriptivist) usage of the English subjunctive.
>
>Aside to Laurence Horn:  You give the examples
>
>     She insists that he not take his medicine
>     She insists that he does not take his medicine.
>
>Indeed the difference between the two is in the aspect of the verb.
>A prescriptivist, however, would render the latter as:
>
>     She insists that he do not take his medicine.
>
>
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--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
15C Morrill Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
517-353-4736
preston at msu.edu

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