Let’s revisit a very interesting question about subjunctive usage posted in the Forum by South Korean student Leelee sometime ago after she took G-TELP, an English-language proficiency test used by some South Korean schools and companies. She related that she was confused by this multiple-choice question:
1. “S recommended that we ________.” Answer choices: (a) should meet; (b) must meet; (c) meet.
She said that she knows that in such sentences that use “recommended” and similar verbs (“requested,” “ordered,” “asked,” and “commanded”), the auxiliary verb “should” is correct but optional. But then, she asked, which of the remaining two options should she pick—“must meet” or “meet”?
Here’s my reply to Leelee’s question:That sentence in the multiple-choice test that baffled her is one of the forms that subjunctive sentences can take. Recall that the
subjunctive mood denotes acts or states that are conditional or contingent on possible outcomes of the speaker’s wish, desire, or doubt, as in “I’ll forgive her if she apologizes.” This is as opposed to denoting acts and states in real-world situations, which is what the
indicative mood does (“She just took the risk.”), or to expressing direct commands, which is what the
imperative mood does (“Take your time!”).
Now, the form of the sentence in that test is what’s called
the parliamentary motion or jussive form of the subjunctive. It can denote an indirect demand, strong suggestion, or pointed request, as in “We ask that the Impeachment Court act on this matter without delay.” Take note that here, the main clause states the speaker’s desire (“we ask”) and the subordinate “that”-clause describes the nature of the desired action (“that the Impeachment Court act on this matter without delay”).
Keep firmly in mind that in this form of the subjective sentence, the operative verb in the “that”-clause oddly takes the third-person singular form minus the “-s” or “-es” at the tail end, or what’s known as the base form of the verb (in this particular case, “ask” is used instead of “asks”).
Based on these considerations, it becomes clear that the sentence contemplated by that grammar test question is a sentence in the subjunctive mood. The correct answer choice is therefore “(a) meet,” so the correct form of that sentence should be this: “S recommended
that we meet.” The answer couldn’t be “(b) must meet,” for using the verbal auxiliary “must” in the sentence “S recommended
that we must meet” will make it semantically defective. Indeed, the verbal auxiliary “must” is redundant in that sentence because both its sense and purpose are already subsumed by the subjunctive character of the construction itself.
Having said that, I must say that subjunctive sentences of the form presented by Leelee can sometimes sound very formal and officious. Indeed, the use the subjunctive “that”-clause in that manner can justifiably be used only by individuals who can invoke a vested power to compel other people beholden to them to follow what they say, such as statesmen, legislators, bureaucrats, jurists, lawyers, ideologues, and clerics.
So for laypeople like me and most English users, I would recommend a grammatically simpler and less formal-sounding alternative: use the auxiliary verb “should” together with the operative verb in the “that”-clause, as in “S recommended
that we should meet.” This, in fact, was what Leelee cited as a grammatically correct alternative to the subjunctive construction, except that “should” is really optional grammatically and can thus be dropped altogether.
So perhaps using plain and unpretentious English would be an even simpler and more forthright alternative: “S
says we should meet.”
(Next:
Using “can” or “could”’ and “will” or “would”) January 3, 2019
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*G-TELP is the acronym for General Tests of English Language Proficiency, a five-level test ranging from beginner to advanced, with Level 5 as entry level and Level 1 the professional level. This essay, 1,124th of the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the December 27, 2018 print edition of The Manila Times
, © 2018 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
