Friday May 11, 2007
How the subjunctive works
OPEN CHANNEL
THE query by reader Zexabyte (April 25) about the expression “Till death do us part” and the explanation by Fadzilah Amin (who gamely admitted that her account was not satisfactory) give us a chance to remind ourselves of the three moods for verbs:
·the indicative (in which the verb expresses an action or state in a matter-of-fact manner, e.g. He will go to the concert tomorrow),
·the imperative (in which the verb expresses a command or exhortation, e.g. Muthu, please shut the window), and
·the subjunctive (in which the verb expresses a wish and/or conveys the sense of impossibility, improbability, uncertainty, etc.)
The abbreviation R.I.P., which is usually taken to mean “Rest in peace”, is actually from the Latin “Requiescat in pace” (May he/she rest in peace) or the plural “Requiescant in pace” (May they rest in peace). Here, the subjunctive (in the active voice) is indicated by the inflection -at (singular) or -ant (plural) for the third-conjugation verb requiesco, requiescere.
Unfortunately, English verbs, unlike in Latin, do not have inflections to indicate the subjunctive, so that the subjunctive mood has to be indicated in other ways – as, for example:
·when the past tense is used instead of the present tense, without regard to the sequence of tenses (I wish it was true – expressing a wish for something that possibly could have happened);
·when the plural verb is used instead of the singular, regardless of subject-and-verb agreement (I wish it were true – expressing a wish for something that is impossible); and
·when the base form (infinitive) of the verb is used rather than the corresponding finite verb (The law stipulates that all motor vehicles be licensed).
For further examples, let us look at the following well-known sayings in which the verbs (underlined) are in the subjunctive mood.
1) “Bless you!” – uttered to someone who has just sneezed. The actual meaning is (May God) bless you, where the verb is in the subjunctive mood.
2) “God save the queen.” The proper sense of the expression is (May) God save the queen.
3) “... Curst be he who moves my bones” – from the epitaph on Shakespeare’s tombstone. The verb is the infinitive, curst be (or, in modern English, be cursed), rather than the finite, is cursed.
Coming back to the original query by Zexabyte, that quote from a Christian wedding ceremony just expresses a wish by way of a verb in the subjunctive: Till death part us – not Till death parts us.
That wish, Till death part us, has come into common use with some modification: the construction is inverted (the object of the verb is placed before the verb); and the verb is, for emphasis, changed from “part” to “do part”. – Dr Lim Chin Lam, Penang
RSS
