Subjunctive(?): not critical that

[Joel S. Berson]

I'm with Mark on this.  And would say that the first -- "She insists
that he not take his medicine" -- is a subjunctive because the
speaker is asserting the distinct possibility, even the probability,
of the present situation being the contrary -- that is, he *is*
taking his medicine presently (and she wants him not to).

Joel

At 3/23/2008 03:51 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 11:09 AM, JAMES A. LANDAU  <JJJRLandau at netscape.com>
>wrote:
>
> >
> > 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.
>
>
>I beg to differ. Apart from your use of the term "aspect", which Larry has
>already commented on, ISTM that you are reading his second example in a
>different way than he and I do, or else describing a "prescriptivist's"
>construction in a way that is strange to me. Semantics of the examples, per
>my understanding (post-editing: plus OED defs of the two senses involved):
>
>1. "She insists that he not take his medicine" reports an imperative.
>(OED def. 4: To make a demand with persistent urgency; to take a persistent
>or peremptory stand in regard to a stipulation, claim, demand, proposal,
>etc. ... b: with *that* and clause.)
>  * She is ordering or demanding or requiring: "Joe, don't take that
>medicine!", or "Thelma, don't give Joe that medicine."
>
>2. "She insists that he does not take his medicine" reports an emphasized
>indicative.
>(OED def. 3b: with clause: To maintain persistently or positively *that* a
>thing is so.)
>  * She is making an assertion, possibly in reply to someone else's
>contradiction of her previous assertion: "No, Joe is NOT taking his
>medicine. Didn't you hear me the first time, or are you calling me a liar?"
>
>--
>Mark Mandel
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org