Given previous discussion, I almost hesitate to raise a definitional question, but I have to ask, what do you or the teacher mean by "subjunctive"? Morphologically, English lost its subjective mood a few hundred years ago. We have ways of expressing counterfactuals and mandative or indefinite propositions, using, respectively, "were" or the base form of the verb, but to call those subjunctive is to use the term to refer to function rather than to form. As The Oxford Companion to the English Language states (p. 997), "...in Modern English there are few distinctive subjunctive forms and the use of the term is controversial." Or, as Follett's Modern English Usage, p. 314, somewhat more pithily puts it, "...no one not a grammarian need even know where the subjunctive lurks or why."
Herb
All right, this is a serious question (no tricks). I just received
an e-mail from a parent of a second grader. The question included the
following:
"She [the second grader] recently came home with some sentences to
edit, i.e., (7)would you like it if i play at kid's castle with You?
This sentence contains 7 mistakes.
She corrected 6 mistakes...Would you like it if I play at Kids' Castle
with
you? (Kids' Castle is a local park)
The teacher corrected the 7th mistake, Would you like it if I PLAYED
at
Kids' Castle with you? (caps for emphasis only).
Can you explain the reason for the use of the past tense of the verb
play?"
Among other things, my response was that "played" is not just past
tense, but a subjunctive. I also expressed curiosity about what
instruction, if any, the students had had about subjunctives. Finally, I
noted that I would be sending this question to the list, and I gave the
parent the address of the archives so that she can follow your
responses.
The questions are:
1.) Do you agree that "played" would be a subjunctive here?
2.) Do you agree that "play" would be an error?
3.) Do you think that second graders should be accountable for
subjunctives?
4.) If your answer to (3.) is affirmative, how would you teach them?
Thanks,
Ed
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