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To begin with, hardly convenient in this respect would appear the shifted nomination of the "oblique" tenses
broadly used in grammars, i.e. the renaming of the past imperfect into the "present" and the past perfect into the
simple "past". By this shift in terms the authors, naturally, meant to indicate the tense-shift of the "oblique
moods", i.e. the functional difference of the tenses in the subjunctive mood from their counterparts in the
indicative mood. But the term "tense" is clearly a categorial name which ought to be consistent with the formal
structure of the category common for the whole of the verb. As a result of the terminological shift, the tense-
structure of the verb receives a hindering reflection, the confusion being aggravated by the additional difficulty
of contrasting the "present" tense of one system of the oblique moods (which is formally past) against the
"present" tense of another system of the oblique moods (which is formally present).
Hardly consistent with adequacy would appear the division of the general mood system into several moods
at the upper level of presentation. "Imperative", "subjunctive one", "subjunctive two", "conditional",
"suppositional" - these are in fact shown in separate contrasts to the indicative, which hinders the observation
of the common basis underlying the analysed category.
The notions "synthetical" moods and "analytical" moods, being formal, hardly meet the requirements of
clarity in correlation, since, on the one hand, the "synthetical" formation in the English subjunctive is of a
purely negative nature (no inflexion), and, on the other hand, the "analytical" oblique formations
("conditional", "suppositional") and the "synthetical" oblique formations ("subjunctive one", "subjunctive
two") are asymmetrically related to the analytical and synthetical features of the temporal-aspective forms of
the verb ("subjunctive one" plus part of "subjunctive two" against the "analytical moods" plus the other part of
"subjunctive two").
Apparently inconsistent with the function of the referent form is the accepted name "conditional" by which
the form-type of consequence is designated in contrast to the actual form-type of condition ("subjunctive two").
The attempted survey of the system of the English mood based on the recent extensive study of it and
featuring oppositional interpretations, has been aimed at bringing in appropriate correlation the formal and the
functional presentations of its structure.
We have emphasized that underlying the unity of the whole system is the one integral form of the
subjunctive standing in opposition to the one integral form of the indicative. The formal mark of the opposition
is the tense-retrospect shift in the subjunctive, the latter being the strong member of the opposition. The shift
consists in the perfect aspect being opposed to the imperfect aspect, both turned into the relative substitutes for
the absolutive past and present tenses of the indicative. The shift has been brought about historically, as has
been rightly demonstrated by scholars, due to the semantic nature of the subjunctive, since, from the point of
view of semantics, it is rather a mood of meditation and imagination.
The term "subjunctive" itself cannot be called a very lucky one: its actual motivation by the referent
phenomena has long been lost so that at present it is neither formal, nor functional. The mood system of
unreality designated by the name "subjunctive" might as well be called "conjunctive", another meaningless
term, but stressing the unity of English with other Germanic languages. We have chosen the name
"subjunctive", though, as a tribute to the purely English grammatical tradition. As for its unmotivated character,
with a name of the most general order it might be considered as its asset, after all.
The subjunctive, the integral mood of unreality, presents the two sets of forms according to the structural
division of verbal tenses into the present and the past. These form-sets constitute the two corresponding
functional subsystems of the subjunctive, namely, the spective, the mood of attitudes, and the conditional, the
mood of appraising causal-conditional relations of processes. Each of these, in its turn, falls into two systemic
sub-sets, so that at the immediately working level of presentation we have the four subjunctive form-types
identified on the basis of the strict correlation between their structure and their function: the pure spective, the
modal spective, the stipulative conditional, the consective conditional.
For the sake of simplifying the working terminology and bearing in mind the existing practice, the
described forms of the subjunctive can be called, respectively, subjunctive one (pure spective), subjunctive two
(stipulative), subjunctive three (consective), subjunctive four (modal spective, or modal subjunctive). The
functional correlation of these forms can be shown on a diagram (See Fig 3).
FORMS OF THE SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD