Mind your language | 2 July 2011

An American soldier just back from Afghanistan said on television that he thought his fellow combatants should not be withdrawn ‘until the country is stable enough that it can stand on its own feet’. What struck me was not the opinion on strategy but the grammar.

Instead of saying ‘stable enough that it can’, I’d have said ‘stable enough to stand’. My preference for the accusative and infinitive (‘I request him to shut up’) over a subordinate clause with a subjunctive (‘I request that he shut up’) does not cover every circumstance where the so-called mandative subjunctive is used. I can wish, ask, prefer, command, beg, love or require him to shut up, but I cannot suggest, demand or insist him to shut up.

In the latter examples, like everyone else, I use a subordinate clause, and within that clause the verb may be in the subjunctive mood. This seldom shows, because, with regular verbs, the only distinct form of the subjunctive is the third person singular present. So the verb is shut instead of shuts in the subordinate clause: ‘I suggest that he shut up’.

Americans seem far fonder of clauses containing the subjunctive than we are. This is only an impression. I have not read all 129 pages of Mandative Subjunctive in American and British English in the 20th Century, a publication of the university of Uppsala, even though I have had almost 16 years to do so. Perhaps I never shall.

As it is, I was surprised to read the following sentence in the Daily Telegraph: ‘Sixth-formers used social networking websites to demand that the test is re-run.’ There, the subjunctive would surely be normal (and the subjunctive of ‘to be’ is be: ‘demand that the test be re-run’).