Bill,

I'm confused about considering "be" a bare infinitive in your example.

I suggest he be hired.

Instead of a bare infinitive couldn't it be a regular subjunctive with the
absent "that"?

I suggest THAT he be hired.


--

Christine Reintjes Martin
[log in to unmask]





>From: "Spruiell, William C" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Singular or Plural
>Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 18:37:24 -0400
>
>
>
>There seem to be two distinct subclasses of subjunctives: those
>involving a bare-infinitive form after certain verbs like 'suggest', and
>those involving the use of 'were' rather than 'was' with
>first-person-singular contrafactuals:
>
>             I suggest he be hired.
>             If he were here, he would have something to say.
>
>Although American English-speakers quite regularly use 'was' instead of
>'were' in that second kind of subjunctive, I don't hear examples such
>as, "I suggest he is hired" at all, and "I suggest he should be hired"
>quite seldom (I'm not even considering the really archaic prescriptive
>subjunctives such as "If he need medicine, give him this tonic").
>Instead, "I suggest that we hire him" is rather common - but even
>speakers who aren't looking over their shoulders for the grammar police
>will use the canonical subjunctive form without much difficulty. The
>subjunctive is disappearing in contrafactuals, but I'm not sure it is
>with the 'suggestion' type.
>
>Bill Spruiell
>
>Dept. of English
>Central Michigan University
>
>
>
>
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