Present subjunctive vs past subjunctive

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
21

The general gave an order that the sentry WILL fire without asking for a password.
“The general have an order that the sentry should fire without asking for a password.”

Neither of these two look correct to me.

22

The second sentence is OK in BrE (apart from the typo of “have” for “gave”*), but I believe this use of “should” may be less usual in AmE. Perhaps an AmE speaker can comment.

The first sentence is not completely grammatically impossible, but it does not seem harmonious and I am struggling to identify any use for it.

*I do apologise; that was my typo, not yours. I have now corrected it in the original post.

23

Hi everybody. Though I guess I got 70 or 75 percent of comprehension of written English there´s a nightmare for me and that nightmare is called Grammar. I state I’m a perfect ignorant about the names of tenses or something like. I’m taking some test and lectures in ESL to improve my poor knowledges about and all went OK 'till the moment I found SUBJUNCTIVES…

I can understand this form, in fact I use some subjunctives or conditional forms in an intuitive way like in the sentence “I’d buy this car if I were rich”, but in the lecture about subjunctives I found this: “IF NEED BE”… 0_0… I really can’t find the correct meaning of that phrase or the grammatical use into a sentence… it sounds to me like Apaches speaking. Into the text I was reading, next to “IF NEED BE”, I guess the meaning of, for what it’s related there, but it’s a sort of divination.

How it means in other words?

Thanks very much for replying

25

Dozy, Thank you so much for your help and also help me with the post “Wish” (It is such a shame, When my reply is totally wrong for helping somoeone, I’ll study “Wish” again).

I asked my teacher from Kansas, he said it is fine to use it in AmE.(Not will fire/fire/would fire)
“The general have an order that the sentry should fire without asking for a password.”

So, Shifting the subjunctive is not possible and it does not make any senes ?

26

Thanks Waiyin… but I can’t find any post of Dozy there but Tamara’s and Yankee’s in the link you provide… anyway, it is helpful for me all what they have posted there. It’s about the same matter. =)

27

Dozy wrote :

"The phrase “if need be” is a fixed phrase and I’d use it to mean “if necessary” or “if needed”.

For the purposes of the letter you’re describing, it seems to me that you should stick with saying “if necessary” or “if needed”.

I’d say you could use “if required”, but I’d still tend to prefer “if necessary” or “if needed”. "

Hope it helps

28

Hi,
I am not an American NES. I am a learner. I want to tell you what I do not understand.

It looks strange to me that “should+verb” was used with the word “order”, I mean I thought it could not be used for an obligation, which one can not tell his opinion about.
The general didn’t tell them his opinion that sentry should fire but made an order.

Direct speech

The general,‘Sentry shall fire instead to ask for a password.’

What could be indirect speech for this sentence?

  1. The general gave an order that the sentry should fire without asking for a password. or
  2. The general gave an order that the sentry had to fire without asking for a password. or
  3. The general gave an order to the sentry to fire instead to ask for a password.

Thanks

29

Hello everyone,
As I am new to this forum & I’m here to learn English with proper grammar, so I wanted to know about the subjunctive? Would anyone help me to answer the question.

30

Hi Albert,

Welcome to the forum. You can read more about the subjunctive here:

TOEIC listening, photographs: A designer loft

31

That was actually Yankee. I did not participate in that thread.

If by “shifting the subjunctive” you mean changing “fire” to “fired”, no, it does not make sense in that sentence.

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32

Literally it means “If a need exists”. However, it is treated as a fixed expression, and the grammatical pattern on which it is formed is essentially dead now.

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33

It should be “The general said, ‘The sentry shall fire instead of asking for a password.’” (at least, I think that’s what you mean). “shall” is not used much in this way in modern English, other than in formal and official documents. (Also, the original was “without asking for a password”. I’m not sure whether you had any particular point in changing this, or if it was just accidental.)

These are all possible, with the correction shown.