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Be that as it may: The Unremarkable Trajectory of the English Subjunctive in North American Speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 May 2021

Laura Kastronic  and
Shana Poplack
Laura Kastronic
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Shana Poplack
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa
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Abstract

The English subjunctive has had a checkered history, ranging from extensive use in Old English to near extinction by Late Modern English. Since then, the mandative variant was reported to have revived, while the adverbial subjunctive continued to diminish. American English is heavily implicated in these developments; it is thought to be leading the revival of the former but lagging in the decline of the latter. Observing that most references to these changes are based on the written language, we examine the diachronic trajectory of the subjunctive in North American English speech. Adopting a variationist perspective, we carried out systematic quantitative analyses of subjunctive use under hundreds of triggers. Results show that, despite the differences in their diachronic trajectories, today both types are not only extremely rare but heavily lexically constrained. We implicate violations of the Principle of Accountability in the disparities between the findings reported here and the consensus in the literature with respect to subjunctive use in North American English.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 107 - 134
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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