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The subjunctive (also known as conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of an utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude toward it.Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, obligation, or action that has not yet occurred; the precise situations in which they are used ...
The English subjunctive is realized as a finite but tenseless clause.Subjunctive clauses use a bare or plain verb form, which lacks any inflection.For instance, a subjunctive clause would use the verb form "be" rather than "am/is/are" and "arrive" rather than "arrives", regardless of the person and number of the subject.
The subjunctive mood in Old English can, theoretically, be traced back to its origins in the Indo-European proto language i.e. the reconstructed hypothetical proto language that is deemed to be the parent of many language families.
The subjunctive is still used today in Modern Greek, whereas the optative has died out. The subjunctive can usually be recognised easily from the fact that it almost always has the letters ω (ō) or η (ē) in the ending, for example εἴπωμεν (eípōmen), γένηται (génētai). It exists in three tenses only: the present, the ...
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Many languages do not have a morphological subjunctive (e.g. Danish and Dutch) and many that do have it do not use it for this sort of conditional (e.g. French, Swahili, all Indo-Aryan languages that have a subjunctive). Moreover, languages that do use the subjunctive for such conditionals only do so if they have a specific past subjunctive form.
In the Latin language, the present subjunctive has a usage labelled the "jussive subjunctive" or coniunctivus iussivus that expresses 3rd-person orders: [4] [5] Adiuvet ("Let him help.") Veniant ("Let them come.") A jussive use of the present subjunctive is also attested for the second person in sayings and poetry, as well as in early Latin. [6]
In Latin grammar, the subjunctive by attraction is a name given when the verb in a relative clause or a temporal clause which is closely dependent on a subjunctive verb becomes subjunctive itself. The name also applies to subjunctives used when a subordinate clause is "so closely connected with an infinitive as to form an integral part of" it.