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91
I'm sure if she tried, she would manage to master riding not later than by the autumn, for all her
unsporting habits (simultaneity - posteriority in the present). - -I was sure if she tried, she would manage it by
the next autumn (simultaneity-posteriority in the past). How much embarrassment should I have been spared
if only I. had known the truth before! (priority of the two events in the present). - -I couldn't keep from saying
that I should have been spared much embarrassment if only I had known the truth before (priority of the two
events in the past).
The sought-for universal mark of the subjunctive, the "unknown quantity" which we have undertaken to
find, is, then, the tense-retrospect shift noted in a preliminary way above, while handling the forms of the
present (i.e. spective) subjunctive. The differential mark is unmistakable, both delimiting the present and past
subjunctive in their different functional spheres (the present and the past verbal forms as such), and
distinguishing the subjunctive as a whole from the indicative as a whole (the tense-retrospect shift taken in its
entirety). The mark is explicit not by virtue of the grammatical system being just so many ready-made,
immovable sets of units and forms; it is explicit due to something very important existing in addition to the
static correlations and interdependencies making up the base of the system. What renders it not only distinct,
but absolutely essential, is the paradigmatic relations in dynamics of language functioning. It is this dynamic
life of paradigmatic connections in the course of speech production and perception that turns the latent
structural differences, if small and insignificant in themselves, into regular and accurate means of expression.
The tense-retrospect shift analysed within the framework of the latent system is almost imperceptible, almost
entirely hidden under the cover of morphemic identity. But this identity proves ephemeral the very moment the
process of speech begins. The paradigmatic connections all come into life as if by magic; the different
treatments of absolutive and relative tenses sharply contrast one against the other; the imperfect and perfect in-
dicative antagonize those of the subjunctive; the tense-retrospect shift manifests its working in explicit
structural formations of contexts and environments, not allowing grammatical misunderstandings between the
participants of lingual communication.
Thus, having abandoned the exhausted formal approach in the traditional sense in order to seek the
subjunctive distinctions on the functional lines, we return to formality all the same, though existing on a
broader, dynamic, but none the less real basis.
As for the functional side of it, not yet looked into with the past subjunctive, it evidently differs considerably
from that which we have seen in the system of the present subjunctive. The present subjunctive is a system of
verbal forms expressing a hypothetical action appraised in various attitudes, namely, as an object of desire,
wish, consideration, etc. The two parallel sets of manifestations of the present subjunctive, i.e. the pure spective
and the modal spective, stand in variant functional inter-relations, conveying essentially identical basic
semantics and partially complementing each other on the conno-tative and structural lines. As different from
this, the past subjunctive is not a mood of attitudes. Rather, it is a mood of reasoning by the rule of contraries,
the contraries being situations of reality opposed to the corresponding situations of unreality, i.e. opposed to the
reflections of the same situations placed by an effort of thinking in different, imaginary connections with one
another. Furthermore, the past subjunctive, unlike the present subjunctive, is not a system of two variant sets of
forms, though, incidentally, it does present two sets of forms constituting a system. The difference is, that the
systemic sets of the past subjunctive are functional invariants, semantically complementing each other in the
construction of complex sentences reflecting the causal-conditional relations of events.
The most characteristic construction in which the two form-types occur in such a way that one constitutes
the environment of the other is the complex sentence with a clause of unreal condition. The subjunctive form-
type used in the conditional clause is the past un-posterior; the subjunctive form-type used in the principal
clause is the past posterior. By referring the verbal forms to the past, as well as to the posterior, we don't imply
any actual significations effected by the forms either of the past, or of the posterior: the terms are purely
technical, describing the outer structure, or morphemic derivation, of the verbal forms in question. The method
by which both forms actualize the denotation of the timing of the process has been described above.
The subjunctive past unposterior is called by some grammarians "subjunctive two". Since we have reserved
the term "subjunctive" for denoting the mood of unreality as a whole, another functional name should be chosen
for this particular form-type of the subjunctive. "Spective" can't be used here for the simple reason that the
analysed mood form differs in principle from the spective in so far as its main functions, with the exception of a
few construction-types, do not express attitudes. So, to find an appropriate functional name for the mood form
in question, we must consider the actual semantic role served by it in syntactic constructions.
We have already stated that the most typical use of the past unposterior subjunctive is connected with the
expression of unreal actions in conditional clauses (see examples cited above). Further observations of texts