How is the English Subjunctive Composed?



Yesterday, I read about the English subjunctive mood. I tried to, but couldn't, discern a concise conception of it.


What do you regard as a useful and concise conception of the subjunctive mood?



Answer



Regardless if a language supports it, the subjunctive exists.


The ambiguous, vague and imprecise view of phrase-structure linguistics (vs the more precise dependency structure linguistics) calls the subjunctive a "mood". Unfortunately, prevalent English grammatical analysis is still driven by the obsolete phrase-structure grammar. Therefore, we would find the subjunctive concept ill-defined under this outmoded grammatical analysis framework.


In Mathematics, we have a concept known as imaginary numbers. Imaginary numbers are just as concrete in existence and equally useful as "real" numbers. Where, square root of "−1" is the base factor of imaginary numbers.


The subjunctive exists in imaginary time. Using computer science lingo, the subjunctive is an encapsulated object.


What is an object?


Let's look at the Seawolf class of submarines. Seawolf class is just a design. It may stay just as a design without having any submarines built. So that we could merrily refer to the Seawolf without any actual submarines built. But when we refer to the USS-Connecticut, we would be referring to an actual object built to the specs of the Seawolf design.


What is a module?


When we design integrated circuits, we have blocks of design templates stored in our library of structures. Each template encompasses not just the circuitry but also constraints of their administrative and manufacturing processes. And then we could start picking those templates from the toolbar and lay them out to arrange into an actual IC design.


Time capsule grammar?


What if we could create a descriptive template of events, where all the past, present, future are related to each other in an independent encapsulation box, as though time other than within that box does not exist? And then we could use this template and drop it into any actual time past, present or future.


Such a grammatical template is what we would call the subjunctive "mood". Notice that I condescendingly and subjunctively refer to "mood", in disdain of its vagueness. A subjunctive encapsulation would have the full set of past, present, future tenses, progressive, perfected, infinite elements, participles, etc.



However, in English, we do not have a separate set of tenses for the subjunctive encapsulation. We use the past to denote subjunctive encapsulation. Using the past does make some sense, as it fulfills the functionality of yanking a module off from being grounded to any actual time, to allow us to freely deploy the module at any point in time.


Why do we need temporally (aka time-based) ungrounded modular grammar? Because we want to be able to move a set of encapsulated events freely across time, while keeping the relativity within the encapsulation intact:




  1. We want to talk about fantasies, which we know will never happen at any time.




  2. We want to talk about actual events that happen all the time, but we just wish to talk about one exemplary instance without restricting when in history they would happen — regardless now, in the past or in the future.




  3. We want to talk about actual events that either happened in the past, are happening now, or will happen in the future, but which happen regularly across a restricted range of time. But, we wish to describe an exemplary point in time without restricting at which actual point in time.




  4. We want to talk about actual events that either have happened or will happen, but we wish to hypothetically shift those events to another point in time.




  5. We want to propose bringing into existence events which are possible, but which have not happened before.




  6. We want to propose bringing into existence events which have happened to someone, some other place, in a story or in a movie — specifying where and when we wish to have them happen.




  7. We want to bring into existence a set of events A, if and only if another set of events B happens. We don't know when set B would happen, or if would ever happen. And we wish to say that set A's happening is dependent on set B's happening, stating either, A before B, A with B, A after B, or A just happens at an indefinite time as long as B happens.




  8. etc, etc.




So I gave 8 examples of why we need the subjunctive time module and the most important example is example #8. Why?


You see, the need for encapsulated time module is a continuum. All the space on the planet would not be adequate to document all the reasons and situations you would need to use it. Traditional grammar would try to quantize that continuum into buckets like optative, cohortative, conditional, jussive, blah, blah — where frequently we would find a situation that would be inadequately contained by these quantization, or that a situation is either a composite of or in between of such quantization.


It is said that Taichi, when mastered, is a very potent and deadly set of skills. People describe it as unrestricted in time and space, or fluent as water. They compare it to Shaolin which is also said to be potent and deadly, but restricted and grounded in time and space. Imagine you could modularise your actions and responses, to fluently shift to deploy each module in time and space. So, people hyperbolically say when you master Taichi that way, you would become invincible.


So, similarly I urge y'all not to restrict your understanding of subjunctive modularity to those "moods" pigeon-holed by traditional constituency grammar. Free your mind, and just think about floating your subjunctive description in terms of either



  1. You wish to continue your event module ungrounded.

  2. You wish to ground the module to actual time, but without defining when.

  3. You wish to ground your module at a particular point in time.


Subjunctive language is very important in statistics, especially when Bayesian statistics is involved. Analysing the subjunctivity and event-relativity of each statistic is important. Whether a statistic describes events that happened, will happen, might happen, conditionally happens, etc. Unfortunately, most statisticians simply use the future tense, at least those whom I have interacted with.


Having freed your mind, you could then indulge in subjunctive Kabbalah:



  • A subjunctive of another subjunctive.

  • A subjunctive of another subjunctive, which is a subjunctive of another subjunctive. A cascade of subjunctives.

  • Bayesian dependency of subjunctives.

  • Cyclically dependent set of subjunctives.

  • Subjunctive recursion.

  • and most importantly of all: etc, etc.


The length thus far of this thesis gives me no space to give examples quantized to traditional constituency grammar — sorry. It is unfortunate that the English language does not have a separate set of tenses for the subjunctive. And therefore we have to skillfully use existing tenses and common-sense to describe subjunctive situations, on a case by case basis. I am certain there isn't a natural language on the planet that provides adequate means to treating subjunctive situations.


~ May the subjunctive modular karma be with you.


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