Subjunctive Mood 假設語氣

choi

Johnson | Would That It Were So Simple; The strange tale of the subjunctive in English. Economist, Aug 13, 2016.
http://www.economist.com/news/bo ... d-it-were-so-simple
("IN A recent supplement to The Economist, called 'The World If,' we considered several hypothetical futures under such headlines as: 'If Donald Trump was president' * * * Several readers wrote in dismay: surely we meant: 'If Donald Trump were president' * * * Does no one know the English subjunctive anymore?")  

My comment:
(a) The subjunctive (mood) is 假設語氣 in Taiwan. Having been in US for 32 years, I have almost not seen an American use "were" -- possibly except once in print.
(b) subjunctive (n; from Latin subjunctus, past participle of subjungere to join beneath, subordinate)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subjunctive

(c) "Subjunctive 'were' is an odd bird. Since Joseph Priestley in 1761, grammarians have fretted that it was on its way to disappearing from English. There are 37,704 verbs in the Oxford English Dictionary; only one has a special subjunctive form—'to be.' Even then, 'to be' has a special subjunctive for only two of the six grammatical persons: first-person singular and third-person singular. In the other 37,703 verbs the subjunctive ('if we had') looks just like the ordinary indicative ('we had')."
(i) Joseph Priestley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Priestley
(1733 – 1804; "Appalled at the quality of the available English grammar books, Priestley wrote his own: The Rudiments of English Grammar (1761)" )
(ii) realis mood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realis_mood
(Most languages [eg, English] have a single realis mood called the indicative mood)

mood = 語氣

(d) "The English 'were' is the runt of the subjunctive litter * * * 'The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language,' by Geoffrey Pullum and Rodney Huddleston [2002], calls counterfactual 'were' the 'irrealis,' rather than the subjunctive, and says that it is an unstable remnant of an earlier system."
(i) runt (n): "an animal unusually small of its kind; especially : the smallest of a litter of pigs"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/runt
(ii) counterfactual (adj): "contrary to fact <counterfactual assumptions>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/counterfactual

I guess it here means not "realis."

(e) "language is much more complex than short-and-sharp grammars portray."

There is just one online English dictionary that has the definition of
short-and-sharp (adj): "not long and having a pointed end" (of a stick, for example)
http://dictionary.babylon-software.com/short_and_sharp/"

(f) "many grammar books * * * consider 'if he was' simply less formal [than 'if it were']. Defoe, Swift and Addison were using 'was' in such sentences three centuries ago."
(i) Daniel Defoe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Defoe
(c 1660 – 1731)
(ii) Jonathan Swift
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Swift
(1667 – 1745; Gulliver's Travels)
(iii) Joseph Addison
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Addison
(1672 – 1719)

(g) "In the recent [2016] Coen brothers film 'Hail, Caesar!,' a stuffy older English film director struggles endlessly to get a backwoods-bred young American actor to master a single line, which both includes and sums up the subjunctive: 'Would that it were so simple…' "

Phil Williams, What Does 'Would That It Were' Mean? English Lessons Brighton, Mar 24, 2016.
www.englishlessonsbrighton.co.uk ... -that-it-were-mean/