The EconomistProspero: Books, arts and cultureJohnson: Grammar

Subjunctive SubtletiesSep 25th 2014

READING a story on the fate of European newspapers, your columnist was drowning in bad news – newsrooms decimated, advertisers fleeing – but then a strange sentence appeared:

“Even Rupert Murdoch, who opened a new London headquarters for his UK newspapers last week, is insisting that each of the titles turns a profit, rather than relying on subsidies from other parts of his media empire.”

What? This seems like rather good news, whereas the “Even…” introduction makes it look like yet more bad news. It took your columnist another three reads before diagnosing what probably turned this sentence unintentionally backwards: confusion with the elusive subjunctive.

The sentence would have made perfect sense if it had said that “Even Rupert Murdoch insists that each of his titles turn a profit”. Removing the “-s” would make this a proper subjunctive, and it would make sense. Mr Murdoch isn’t making a claim (“Insisting that” something is true), he is giving an order (“Insisting that” his publishers do something).

What is the subjunctive, anyway? English verbs have "moods". The usual mood is indicative, to talk about facts of the world: Mike is a lawyer. But the subjunctive, another "mood", is used to express things like hopes, expectations, orders, hypothetical situations or something in the uncertain future. Mike's father insisted that he be a lawyer. To give another contrast:

The tenant pays rent on the first of the month (indicative)

The lease requires that the tenant pay rent on the first of the month (subjunctive)

One reason the subjunctive is tricky is that it almost always looks just like the indicative.

Only with a third-person singular subject (he, she, it, Mike, the tenant...) does the subjunctive have an unusual form. He eats becomes that he eat, with no final "-s". (The exception is the verb to be, which always is be in the subjunctive: that I be, that you be, that he be.) So you just need to know that, as a rule, the subjunctive follows certain words: verbs like insist, request, require, demand and prefer, and adjectives

like important and necessary. And in modern English it almost always appears in a clause beginning with that.

We request that passengers remain seated.

He insisted that students be on time, or stay away from class entirely.

It is important that each member of the team understand the assignment.

One reason the subjunctive is getting rarer, and so is misused, is that the subjunctive nowadays looks a bit stuffy. The sentences above are all more naturally rendered in a different way:

We ask passengers to remain seated.

He required students to be on time, or stay away from class entirely.

It is important for each member of the team to understand the assignment.

The subjunctive used to be much more common in English. This is why most subjunctives that people know are fossils from an earlier era, archaic phrases like "far be it from me", and religious phrases like "God bless you", "the Lord be with you" and "God shed his grace on thee and crown thy good with brotherhood" (from "America the Beautiful"). All these can be understood as beginning with the word “may”: "May God bless you," and so on. "Until death do you part" also has an archaic word order, so many people think the subject of the verb do here is you. But the subject is death, and the verb is a subjunctive do. This simply means "until death parts you". (Until plus the subjunctive is now obsolete, but it was common in the era of the King James Bible: "we will go along by the king's high way, until we be past thy borders.")

Because the subjunctive feels fusty and can be tricky, the indicative is creeping into its place in certain cases.

It is important that your child do his homework in a quiet room.

It is important that your child does his homework in a quiet room.

With tweezers and microscope one could tease apart different meanings for these two, but they are basically equivalent.

The problem facing our media reporter in our Rupert Murdoch example is that insist is unusual, with two radically different meanings based on whether it takes an indicative or subjunctive clause:

Rupert Murdoch insists that each paper turns a profit (to a sceptical reporter who thinks some papers are losing money)

But

Rupert Murdoch insists that each paper turn a profit (to his papers’ publishers in a tense meeting)

Given the trickiness of the subjunctive and the increasing willingness to replace it with the indicative, the slip is understandable, but a confusing slip – not just an innocent language change – it is.

Pity the poor subjunctive, hanging out with whom as dowdy old contestants on the reality show of English grammar, both wondering which will be voted off by English-speakers first. Once, English was a heavily inflected language like German or Russian. Gradually, speakers got rid of verb endings like –est and –eth, ditched the pronouns thou and ye, and the case endings on all English nouns except the pronouns. The subjunctive may not survive the coming centuries. That might be a shame, but speakers will do what they will do. Or as the subjunctive might say for itself, with a resigned sigh: so be it.