Range of variants in mandative clauses

Most studies look at the two major finite variants within mandative clauses, the subjunctive and should, but there are differences in the amount of attention paid to indicatives, non-distinct forms and other modals. A question that is not often seriously considered in studies is whether the non-finite complementation options available to speakers in the same environment should be included.

The indicative variant, as in (101) and (102), is not always taken into account by researchers, possibly because the national variety with which they are most familiar does not easily allow it.

(101) However, as a contract, College now insists that we are in the loop for obtaining College signature.

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(102) Stephen was swaying as she and Saul stripped off his bloodied clothes; giddily shaved in rusty water, insisted that she washed too and brushed her hair with the Jaguar’s carpet brush.

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An exception is John Algeo, an AmE speaker, who has paid particular attention to the indicative variant, supplying numerous real-world examples of both present and past indicatives in mandative clauses in more than one study (e.g. 1992; 2006). Often it is ignored as a variant in studies that are predominantly based on AmE. Crawford (2009), for example, compares AmE and BrE corpora, but does not include indicatives, on the grounds that they are very rarely found in AmE. This is understandable, but it could be argued that it does not give a true comparison of the range of options available to speakers of both varieties. Similarly, a number of other studies, though not US-based, restrict the variants under consideration to just the subjunctive and should when comparison with AmE results is involved (e.g.

Serpollet 2001: 533).²⁴

Occasionally, attitudes towards indicatives in mandative clauses move beyond ignoring them to doubting that they are mandative at all. In her discussion of BrE indicatives, particularly those found in instructions, Övergaard states that:

By using the indicative in these noun clauses rather than the non-inflected or the periphrastic subjunctive, the writer minimizes the volitional element, and the noun clause is turned into an ordinary instruction . . . or a comment or a current fact which may or may not express a personal opinion. (Övergaard 1995: 63)

I would argue that, although the ‘volitional element’ in instructions may not be particularly strong, it does not follow that indicatives can never appear in mandative clauses involving greater deontic force.

Moessner, on the other hand, seems inclined to take Övergaard’s approach one step further by interpreting her comment to mean that the indicative ‘cancels or at least minimises the mandative force of the matrix verb’ (Moessner 2006: 211).

24 The reluctance of some American commentators to treat indicatives as valid variants in mandative clauses can be seen in Bryan Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (1998: 625–626): ‘[Subjunctives are] worth keeping. Following is some evidence of slippage . . .’ Among the examples of ‘slippage’ that follow are two BrE examples of indicatives in mandative clauses in the Sunday Times (demanding that all British beef comes and he suggests that his informant checks) and one from the (British-based newspaper) the European (France proposes that the EC commits) – all of them acceptable in BrE and therefore not ‘slippages’ in any meaningful sense.

Studies vary in their approach to non-distinct forms (which I refer to as NDs), i.e. non-third person singular forms that are not positively identifiable as subjunctives by iST or iNEG (She suggests that I/you/we/they stay). Often they are treated as a separate category, but occasionally they have been counted as subjunctives, notably in Övergaard (1995) and Klein (2009). Categorising them in this way obviously has a significant effect on the figures reported for subjunctives, but it is not always clear that subsequent studies show an awareness of this when discussing results from the studies involved.

It might be argued that the frequency of NDs is one of the contributing factors in the growing acceptability of the subjunctive: the greater the number of clauses without should or other deontic modals that are felt to have mandative force, the lower the expectation for the modality of mandative clauses to be expressed by such modals.

As for modals in general, while a number of studies concentrate on should, some also take into account other types, particularly studies looking at diachronic change, e.g. Övergaard (1995) and Peters (1998). In their grammar, Huddleston & Pullum (2002: 996–998) raise the question of whether, in PDE, all clauses containing such modals following mandative triggers are best characterised as

mandative, in particular when the modals seem to retain the deontic force they normally display in main clauses. This is discussed in greater detail in Section 4.3.8. However such clauses are analysed, it still seems to me to be justifiable to include them in studies involving mandative clauses, as they are clearly one of the options available to speakers in such contexts.

A number of items that license finite mandative clauses also allow non-finite complementation in which the subject of the non-finite clause is different from that of the matrix clause, so that the meaning conveyed is similar to that of a finite mandative construction. Mostly these are infinitival constructions with an intervening noun phrase, as in I instructed him to report back as soon as possible, but gerund-participial constructions are also possible, with or without prepositions, as in She proposed his leaving before noon and They insisted on his returning the company car, respectively. Non-finite clauses of this type are sometimes mentioned in mandative-related studies (e.g. Haegeman 1986: 69;

Nichols 1987: 146; Algeo 1992: 611; Leech et al. 2009: 70), but they are not included among the variants considered. There are practical reasons for this, involving the difficulty of reliably assessing the interchangeability of the various constructions, as Hundt discusses (1998b: 162), but the result is that the possibility of correlations between the various types of complementation remains under-explored.

One such correlation has been made by Peters (2009) in her study of the mandative subjunctive in six national varieties. She found that the four triggers most likely to be followed by subjunctives

(suggest, demand, recommend, move) all ‘belong to the subset which require a that clause complement:

demanded that he bring a partner. The nonfinite construction: *demanded him to bring a partner is not available’ (2009: 131). (See Sections 5.2.17 and 6.5.5 for further discussion of this claim.)