The subjunctive mood in English is used to describe actions, ideas and events that are not real facts; for example imagined possibilities (or impossibilities!), and future intentions. It is often used in dependent clauses, such as if statements in conditional statements – if I were younger, or in suggestions, I suggest that he go home. The subjunctive form uses verb forms that may look the same as regular tenses, and as it sounds formal it is less common in modern English – so it is not always easy to spot. This quick guide will give a useful introduction to subjunctive mood, though.
How to form the Subjunctive
The subjunctive mood uses a simple form of the verb, which is usually identical to the bare infinitive. So the subjunctive form of “to go” is “go”, “to walk”, “walk”. This means the subjunctive is only noticeable in certain tenses and verb forms.
In the present tense, the subjunctive form is the same as the simple verb form for first person, second person and plural subjects (I, you, we, they) – it just loses the third person S for he, she and it subjects.
An important exception here is for the verb “to be”, which has a distinct subjunctive form for all subjects: be (I be, you be, we be, they be, he/she/it be).
In the past tense, “to be” is the only verb that has a distinct subjunctive form – using were for all subjects. Otherwise, the past subjunctive uses the same form as regular past tense.
The subjunctive mood is often apparent following a verb of suggestion/advice, with or without that:
- I requested that they stop playing music.
- They proposed that he leave the club.
When to use the subjunctive
The subjunctive mood is typically used in formal settings, emphasising important details (such as suggestions or requirements).
- I advised that he work harder.
- The doctor suggested that she do more exercise.
Note that in many cases where we use the subjunctive, an alternative, informal version is often possible. These may use modal verbs, such as should, or sometimes just follow regular grammatical structure in an informal setting.
- I advised that he should work harder.
- The doctor suggested she does more exercise.
Using these forms instead of the subjunctive is unlikely to be noticed by most native English speakers.
Other subjunctive forms – negative, continuous and passive
The subjunctive may be used in negative forms, which is often done for formal suggestions and restrictions.
- It is best that you not go to France.
It may be used in a continuous, for actions that are temporary or ongoing.
- It is imperative that he be waiting for us when we arrive.
And it is useful in the passive tense, in formal declarations, demands, and suggestions that focus on the result and not the actor.
- I proposed that the meeting be moved until later.
- They demand that all dogs be
Common Subjunctive Verb Collocations
There are a number of verbs and expressions that are commonly followed by the subjunctive form. These may or may not be joined to the subjunctive with that. Notice, though, that in these examples the subjunctive is only really distinct in the he, she and it and the past to be form.
- to advise (that) – I advised that she eat less cake.
- to ask (that) – They asked that we keep the noise down.
- to command (that) – We commanded that the party finish.
- to demand (that) – John demanded he receive a refund.
- to desire (that) – She desires that he write more poetry.
- to insist (that) – The police insisted we be more careful.
- to propose (that) – The council are proposing that the park close.
- to recommend (that) – We recommended that you wash your hair.
- to request (that) – Tracy required we meet somewhere else.
- to suggest (that) – Who suggested that you be in this class?
- to urge (that) – I urged that he study harder.
The following expressions are also often followed by the subjunctive:
- It is a good idea (that)
- It is a bad idea (that)
- It is best (that)
- It is recommended (that)
- It is desirable (that)
- It is crucial (that)
- It is essential (that)
- It is important (that)
- It is urgent (that)
- It is imperative (that)
- It is vital (that)
Hi Phil,
After reading through, I have some questions about the subjunctive mood, and about grammatical moods in general.
Firstly, I’ve read that English only comprises three grammatical moods, namely indicative mood (used to express facts, statements, opinions and questions), subjunctive mood (to express unreal situations) and imperative mood (for expressing instructions/commands). And that the majority of sentences, such as everyday writing/communication, is in the indicative mood. Is this right?
Secondly, one definition of mood which I’ve come across is “Mood is only one of many verb properties, others being tense, aspect, and voice. It is expressed through the sentence’s verbs and grammatical structure.”, however, the oxford Lexico dictionary says “A category or form which indicates whether a verb expresses fact (indicative mood), command (imperative mood), question (interrogative mood), wish (optative mood), or conditionality (subjunctive mood).” In other words, the key thing by which a speech/sentence’s grammatical mood is determined is based on the form of the verb used, correct?
Thirdly, I suppose it is possible for say one piece of writing, or even a paragraph of the writing, to contain multiple sentences, with each sentence expressing a different grammatical mood, correct?
Fourth, is it possible for one sentence to contain more than one grammatical mood? is so, could you quote an example?
Fifth, you mentioned above that “In the present tense, the subjunctive form is the same as the simple verb form for first person, second person and plural subjects (I, you, we, they) – it just loses the third person S for he, she and it subjects.” By this, do you mean that for the present tense subjunctive mood, the verb form is the same for all grammatical person, including the third person singular?
Sixth, you also mentioned that “An important exception here is for the verb “to be”, which has a distinct subjunctive form for all subjects: be (I be, you be, we be, they be, he/she/it be). In the past tense, “to be” is the only verb that has a distinct subjunctive form – using were for all subjects. Otherwise, the past subjunctive uses the same form as regular past tense.” For this sixth point, I’m afraid I don’t quite understand it. For instance, if I say “If I were an astronaut, I would find out all the mysteries of the cosmos” – this sentence is referring to the present and future time, even though the verbs are “were” and “would”, correct? My understanding all along is that the past tense form of a verb, when used to express the subjunctive mood instead of doing its regular job of expressing the past time (tense), is used to refer to a present/future time situation which is hypothetical/unreal/impossible, is this correct?
Seventh, as a quick summary of grammatical mood, I suppose that mood being just one aspect (of a verb) – and that its use is mainly to express the attitude that the speaker/writer is trying to express – will work in conjunction with other aspects such as tense and grammatical persons, correct? This means you could have a second person singular subject, with a second person singular verb form, expressing the subjunctive mood for the present time, or any other combination of mood/person/tense (time), correct?
Apologies for the long post, and my thanks in advance!
Regards,
Shizuka
Hi Shizuka,
No problem, these are very thoughtful questions and certainly very relevant, though as I said in another comment, probably worthy of a separate article rather than to be answered fully here. It was shortsighted of me, I suppose, to cover the subjunctive mood because it caught my attention but to not have revisited this topic and put it into broader context of other moods (which I’ve not really covered elsewhere on this site). I’ll answer briefly what I can here, though:
1) Yes, indicative is the most common/default mood.
2) Mood is certainly indicated by verb forms yes, though some additional context may be needed sometimes.
3) Yes; mood can change as often as different verbs are used, really; I think it’s fair to say each clause will have a mood.
4) Yes it is possible, for example a conditional mood could follow fact if you led with a statement and suggested an imagined possibility. (That answer is an example of such a sentence.)
5) I meant that the verb form is the same as the indicative mood for each first-person subject (rather than they are all the same as each other).
6) Yes, your understanding is correct; I’ve perhaps worded that explanation strangely, by comparing it to tense forms, but it is essentially to say we sometimes use ‘were’ where you might expect ‘was’ for the subjunctive mood.
7) Yes, you’re correct, mood is essentially defining purpose, or intended purpose, which is something that applies to different subjects/time combinations.
Hope all this helps – as I say I should produce a more definitive guide to moods in general!
Phil
Dear Phil,
Thanks. To summarize:
(a) English only has three grammatical moods (indicative, imperative and subjunctive) mood.
(b) all three grammatical moods can be used in any of the English grammatical tenses (12 in total)
(c) like tenses, all three grammatical moods can also be used in conjunction with any grammatical persons (first , second and third)
(d) all thoughts/ideas expressed in speech or writing through sentences/clauses etc, will occur in any one of the three grammatical moods, with the indicative mood being the default and most common mood (an example being this very summary)
(e) similar to point (d) above, the indicative mood is most commonly used, and its uses include to express almost anything from facts/statements to thoughts/opinions and even questions. The subjunctive mood is more often used to express hypothetical scenarios or wishes and the imperative is used to issue commands/instructions.
Thus far, may I know if the above summary is correct?
Thanks!
Regards,
Shizuka
Hi Shizuka,
Your points are correct in principle but the exact number of moods we use will vary depending on who you talk to (that is, some teachers will teach, 3,4 or 5…). For instance, we can also discuss interrogative as a mood, and conditional may be separated from subjunctive. The wikipidea article has lots on information on this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_mood
Best,
Phil
Hi Phil,
Thanks for sharing the article! Ah I see, so while English may generally be defined to posses only three grammatical moods (indicative, subjunctive and imperative), because the indicative mood covers a broad range of sentence types (i.e. acts/statements to thoughts/opinions and even questions), some people may choose to further breakdown the indicative mood by extracting the questions and conditional sentences from the indicative mood and calling them interrogative mood (for questions) and conditional mood (for conditional sentences), and instead leave indicative mood only for sentences which really cover facts and opinions expressed as facts. As such, what started out as three major grammatical moods (indicative, subjunctive and imperative) can also snowball into 5 grammatical moods (subjunctive, indicative, imperative, conditional and interrogative)?
Secondly, thanks for confirming the accuracy of the points above, however, for point (d), I find this concept hard to grasp. I mean when writing or speaking, it generally doesn’t even occur to me what mood I am writing or speaking in, so its hard to factor the concept of “mood” into my everyday use.
Still, that being said, its true that all thoughts/ideas expressed in speech or writing through sentences/clauses etc, will occur in any one of the three grammatical moods, with the indicative mood being the default and most common mood (an example the summary above or this very article itself), isn’t it?
P.S. My apologies if the second point above seems to be repetitive, however it does help me to better comprehend the topic. Thanks for your patience and time!
Regards,
Shizuka
Hi Shizuka,
Yes I think you’ve essentially covered it there! There may be more moods too depending on the very specifics of grammar. Your second point there is true though, when we speak English we’re not actively thinking about moods and deciding which is appropriate, moods are really used the other way round – to explain how/why something has been said. Indeed the indicative mood will be most common, and the others come out as needed in specific circumstances. I don’t generally teach mood much myself; when I’m covering grammar it’s usually concerned with elements such as positive statements and questions, looking at such structures, the indicative mood is covered without necessarily naming it. It’s only really when we look at the subjunctive or an imperative that the mood becomes important, as diverging from more expected grammar.
Hi Phil,
My apologies to revisit this point again, but this came up from a conversation I recently had with another classmate. Remember that in the earlier comments we both agreed that “all thoughts/ideas expressed in speech or writing through sentences/clauses etc, will occur in any one of the three grammatical moods, with the indicative mood being the default and most common mood”. In other words, I would say that most of the time (like maybe 99 percent of the time), whenever we say or write something, it will be in the indicative mood (literally the conversation that I had with my classmate being one example of indicative mood) since indicative mood is used to express facts, statements, opinions and questions, which covers just about anything we have to say or write – this is true, isn’t it?
However, my classmate kept insisting that in her view, it is possible for speech or writing to not have any mood at all. Is her view valid?
Thanks!
Regards,
Shizuka✨
Hi Shizuka,
That’s an interesting perspective – it’s somewhat agruable because, as I think I said earlier, we often don’t think in terms of ‘mood’, it’s a grammatical definition used to help explain how language works. To some degree we could say mood isn’t necessarily present in the way we use English, and most native English speakers probably have no idea what the different moods are or when they are being used – but the purpose of moods is to categorise, and from this perspective it must be possible to fit all language into one or other of the moods, otherwise they would not be doing their job. So, in summary, we can certainly mostly get by without ever knowing or using the moods specifically, but no, all language and speech that’s formed in complete clauses should be able to fit into the mood definitions (we tell, mostly, through verbal patterns). Where we have sentence fragments, I suppose mood might be absent, but these would not be complete grammatical ideas anyway (and if properly interrogated would probably fit into a mood pattern if expanded into their true meaning, e.g. “the yellow paint” might be a phrase on its own replying to a question, but might actually mean “The yellow paint is the one I want.”, an imperative response.
I hope this helps.
Phil
Hi Phil,
Concerning the topic of grammatical mood, I’ve read somewhere which says that moods are broken down into two main categories: realis moods (expressing what is real or true) and irrealis moods (expressing what is unreal, hypothetical, or untrue), and that in English, the indicative mood is the only realis mood which can be used to press facts, statements, opinions, or questions.
Firstly, I don’t come across such a breakdown of English grammatical mood into realis and irrealis. Is such a teaching factual?
Secondly, is the definition of realis mood, that it can be used to press facts, statements, opinions, or questions, also factual?
Thanks!
Regards,
Shizuka
Hi Shizuka,
They are terms I’m familiar with but not ones I teach; yes you can use it for English, but it rather generalises lots of different functions into two groups, so I’m not sure how useful it is for students. Realis, as you say, would cover facts, opinions and questions (the latter two are rooted in reality, e.g. “I think this is nice.” = the thought might be disproved, but the action of thinking is real), while irrealis covers a span of moods that have different functions, such as subjunctive, conditional and imperative, which will more typically be studied separately than in a group.
Phil
Hi Phil,
Thanks! Actually I think you already covered what I’m about to ask next but anyway, here goes:
So I suppose it is right to say that the indicative mood is the only realis mood for English?
Also, while I can easily understand why realis mood can cover facts, I am not so sure why it also covers opinions and questions since these two don’t concern facts per se, and so why are they considered “realis”? I think you’ve tried explaining abit of this concept with the example of “I think this is nice” and to explain it by saying that this is rooted in reality, i,e, even though the thought might be disproved, the action of thinking is real. Could you perhaps expound on this a little more, and also cover the part about why questions are also considered part of realis moood?
Lastly, there is such a thing called interrogative mode (basically the mode which covers all questions, i.e. when we ask a question, this means it is in the interrogative mode). If so, is it right to say that interrogative mode is a subset of the indicative mode, since indicative mode also covers questions?
Thanks!
Regards,
Shizuka
Hi Shizuka,
Yes I believe you have the right idea there, with verbs like “think” the act of thinking itself is seen as real regardless of what is thought about. Questions, on the other hand, can be seen as realis when they ask for real information, e.g. “Did you go to school today?” – we may not know the answer, but it is a fact-based question, the yes or no answer is based on what really happened. However this depends on the type of question, a modal question on the other hand might not be realis, e.g. “Would you rather be a dog or a cat?” As I’ve said it’s not an area I’ve done a great deal of work in so I’m not sure these are the best ways to look at it, but yes, for the purposes of fact-based questions I would see interrogative as a subset of the indicative mood.
Hope this helps.
Phil