Were and hypercorrection

In studies involving the past subjunctive, an issue that arises, under a number of different names, concerns environments in which subjunctive were is deemed to be being used incorrectly instead of indicative was.

The two areas that are normally involved were both addressed by Fowler in the ‘Arrivals’ section of his entry on the subjunctive in Modern English Usage. The first concerns the use of were in past contexts:

‘Were (sing.) is, then, a recognizable subjunctive, and applicable not to past facts, but to present or future non-facts; it is entirely out of place in an if-clause concerned with past actualities and not answered by a were or would be in the apodosis’ (1926: 576). The second concerns its use in indirect questions,

particularly those in which whether and if are interchangeable: ‘Latin grammar is perhaps also responsible for the notion that indirect question requires the subjunctive. There is no such requirement in English . . . but again such subjunctives may be found in older writers’ (1926: 577).

Quirk et al. (1985: 158) draw attention to the same two phenomena, pointing out ‘the occasional occurrence of a hypercorrect “pseudo-subjunctive” were’ in their real-world examples (126) and (127):

(126) The pilot appeared to deviate from his flight path to minimize the danger to people living in the town; but if this were his intention, he failed to communicate it to the control tower.

(127) It was difficult to tell whether the language were Semitic or Indo-European.

Huddleston & Pullum (2002: 87) include these perceived misuses in a section on ‘Extended uses of irrealis were’, and offer some explanations. For their example involving an indirect question, ^%She phoned to ascertain whether he were dining at the Club, which they describe in terms of ‘backshift in a

closed interrogative’, they suggest that ‘This construction allows if in place of whether . . . and this can be seen as providing a link to the central uses of irrealis were’ (2002: 87). For their example involving a past-time context (^%If he were surprised, he didn’t show it), their view is that ‘Were here clearly has something of the character of a “hypercorrection”: prescriptive grammar used to insist on were rather than was in modal remoteness constructions, and this may have led to the avoidance of was in certain

neighbouring constructions’ (2002: 87). As is indicated by the ‘^%’ symbol that Huddleston & Pullum insert, the acceptability or otherwise of such examples is not fixed, however, nor is there universal agreement about exactly which uses of subjunctive were are not ‘correct’.

At the beginning of the 1960s, strong views about the topic were aired in two articles in the journal American Speech by William Ryan (1961; 1962), who characterised the perceived misuses as examples of ‘pseudo-subjunctive’ were. The many examples he supplied, all taken from publications from the previous twenty-five years, can be broken down into the two broad classes suggested by Fowler: past-time-related conditionals and indirect questions (introduced by whether or if).

The reasons behind the identification of subjunctive were in indirect questions as a misuse are fairly self-evident. In an example that Ryan (1961: 50) takes from Henry Miller’s Sunday After the War (1944) – ‘As we were going through the immigration formalities the officer asked me jokingly if I were the Henry Miller’ – it’s clear that the original question would have been something along the lines of ‘Are you the Henry Miller’ and so, by the normal rules of backshift, one would expect this to be reported as

‘. . . asked me jokingly if I was the Henry Miller’. The picture with past-time-related conditionals is not so straightforward. First, there are past-time environments in which subjunctive were is generally deemed appropriate, such as after as if. In Ryan’s example –‘He acted as if he were crazy’ (1961: 48) – were is presumably considered acceptable because he wasn’t crazy and, if brought forward into the present, ‘He is acting as if he were crazy’ would be an unobjectionable remote conditional.³² Second, Ryan’s examples of past-time uses that are often considered unacceptable, on the basis that they are not contrary to fact, predominantly fall into two groups. The first group includes conditionals in which the apodosis features the ‘habitual’ use of would,³³ such as his example ‘if my aunt were feeling “upset,” she would ask instead for her “tisane”’ (1961: 50), which, if brought forward to the present, corresponds to an open (not remote) conditional, with an apodosis containing the habitual use of will: If my aunt is feeling upset, she’ll ask

32 In his ABC of Plain Words, Gowers considers that subjunctive were is acceptable with ‘as if and as though, if the hypothesis is not accepted as true, thus: He spoke of his proposal as if it were a complete solution of the difficulty’

(1951: 131).

33 This is the past-time use of would described by Huddleston & Pullum in terms of ‘propensity’ (2002: 197).

instead for her tisane. The second group includes non-habitual examples such as ‘If I were going to be wrecked by giddiness that day, I might as well know now’ (Ryan 1962: 117), which, if brought forward to the present, again corresponds to an open conditional: If I am going to be wrecked by giddiness today, I may as well know now.

But are the ‘errors’ Ryan complains about as clear-cut as he suggests? And are some studies that otherwise take a descriptive approach too quick to discount examples that some would categorise as hypercorrect? As Huddleston & Pullum mention, and as Ryan’s plentiful examples show, such examples are ‘found in the writings of highly prestigious authors’ (2002: 87). A less judgemental view is put forward by Jacobsson, who devotes several pages of his study of the modern English subjunctive to the points raised in Ryan’s articles (1975: 225–230):

[T]here seems to be nothing to prevent a speaker or writer from referring to what are undoubted facts by using subjunctive were with past-time reference . . . It would be a mistake to believe that subjunctive were is confined to the function of expressing rejected condition or unfulfilled wish.

As has been pointed out by Poutsma and others before and after him, were is frequently found also in clauses of open condition. (Jacobsson 1975: 225)³⁴

Jacobsson subsequently supplies dozens of examples from well-known post-war British and American writers³⁵ that demonstrate the use of subjunctive were both in if-clauses with past-time reference and in embedded interrogative clauses, suggesting that the ‘writers quoted above would probably have been surprised to learn that the pseudo-subjunctive is the “last refinement or perversion of English” and that those who make use of it are “overcautious but undertaught”’ (1975: 227). Highlighting the difference between prescriptive and descriptive approaches, he points out that ‘it does not occur to Ryan that the frequency of examples like those listed above may be due to a desire on the part of the writer to express shades of meaning not conveyed by the corresponding indicative form’ (1975: 227).

In his analysis of possible shades of meaning in the ‘habitual’ past-time examples, as in (128), his (37), Jacobsson finds that they describe ‘what would normally happen if or when a certain condition

34 The Poutsma comment Jacobsson refers to is ‘In the case of the time-sphere being the past, the preterite

subjunctive takes the place of the present, but its employment is more limited than the latter, were being apt to raise a notion of rejected condition and suggesting an apodosis with a conditional. Sweet [(1898: 110)] even goes so far as to say “the sequence of tenses in if he were here, I did not see him makes nonsense”. This may apply to this particular sentence, but it must certainly not be inferred from Sweet’s statement that the preterite subjunctive is particularly rare in conditional clauses of open condition’ (Poutsma 1926: 189). Among Poutsma’s examples are the following: Our folly, if it were folly, was expiated by the foolish Emperor at Sedan (Robert Williams Buchanan, That Winter Night, 1886); The dispute ended in the guard assuring the passengers that they should have seats in a heavy coach which would pass that spot in less than half an hour, providing it were not full (Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian, 1818); What a set they were . . . not a sportsman amongst the lot, unless it were George (John Galsworthy, The Man of Property, 1906).

35 These include Saul Bellow, Kingsley Amis, Iris Murdoch, John Braine, Anthony Powell, John Updike, William Faulkner, Doris Lessing and Graham Greene (Jacobsson 1975: 226–228).

was fulfilled’ and that in this context ‘were has a generalizing force’ (1975: 229).³⁶ The majority of the other past-time examples he labels ‘non-committal’ or ‘potential’ (1975: 227), as in (129), his (25), in which he suggests the speaker is reluctant to commit to the truth of the proposition.

(128) Eating our toffee, we would then, if the weather were fine, take a train to the Grünewald.

(Stephen Spender, 1951, World Within World, 125) (129) If it were so, Mrs Egan didn’t seem to notice.

(Angus Wilson, 1964, Late Call, 235)

Regarding the use of subjunctive were in embedded interrogative clauses, Jacobsson points out that

‘Conditional and interrogative clauses have a number of syntactic features in common, and it should come as no surprise, therefore, to learn that subjunctive were is fairly common in indirect questions’

(1975: 230). Again, he demonstrates this with several examples from well-known writers, such as (130), his (58),³⁷ before listing scores of others who ‘have felt no compunction about using

“pseudo-subjunctive” were in dependent questions’ (1975: 230).

(130) He tried not to consider whether he were responsible.

(Norman Mailer, 1948, The Naked and the Dead, 39)

Support for Jacobsson’s defence of hypercorrect were is occasionally found in usage guides. For example, The Oxford Guide to English Usage suggests that it conveys an important nuance: ‘Were may also be used in dependent questions, where there is doubt of the answer, e.g. Hilliard wondered whether Barton were not right after all (Susan Hill)’ (Weiner & Hawkins 1984: 183).

So how, then, have recent studies involving subjunctive were/indicative was treated the question of pseudo-subjunctive were? It is not specifically mentioned by Johansson & Norheim, though their results include figures for were after ‘if (=whether)’ (1988: 33), which suggests that they were not excluded. Peters mentions that she found some examples of were ‘in clauses where if is a synonym for whether’, taking this to indicate that ‘for some Australians (as for British) there is a lingering awareness of formal rules about the use of the were subjunctive’ (1998: 97). In their diachronic study of the past subjunctive in the Brown family of corpora, Leech et al. discuss Ryan (1961) and in the explanation of

36 Palmer’s comment on this type of example is that here ‘If seems to have the sense of “whenever”’ (1988: 153).

37 It is notable that almost all the writers Jacobsson refers to are novelists. It may be that the need to convey the thought processes of characters in fiction makes it a particularly suitable genre for the use of the subjunctive to convey ‘shades of meaning’.

their methodology make clear that they excluded examples featuring the indirect-question type of pseudo-subjunctive (2009: 63–64). A footnote in a later section discussing their results seems to suggest that they also addressed the past-time type, though it’s not clear if they were excluded from the overall figures or not: ‘Interestingly, instances of hypercorrect were in non-counterfactual if-clauses have remained fairly stable in the American corpora (3 in Brown and 4 in Frown), whereas they have completely disappeared in the 1990s BrE corpus (LOB still has 3 instances)’ (2009: 69). The footnote comes within a discussion of the possibility that one reason for the greater use of were in AmE is that ‘Americans may be more susceptible to prescriptive influence in this area of language use’ (2009: 68). They claim that support for this comes from ‘the fact that hypercorrect usage has been commented on in America but not Great Britain’ (2009: 69). Unfortunately, this argument is undermined by the fact that, as mentioned at the beginning of this section, the hypercorrect uses of were were discussed in some detail by Fowler in the most influential British usage guide of the twentieth century (1926: 576–577).

4.6 Conclusion

After exploring the reasons behind the growing interest in the subjunctive, in this chapter I have

introduced the most important topics that have been investigated in the recent studies that are analysed in more detail in Chapter 5. I have also drawn attention to some topics that seem to be under-explored, including (1) past subjunctives in environments other than conditional clauses, such as wishes; (2) present subjunctives in environments in which past subjunctives are more usually found, such as after had rather and it’s time. As for methodology, I have drawn attention to some areas in which decisions might have had unfortunate effects in previous studies. Regarding the past subjunctive, one of these involves the automatic acceptance of examples that are considered to be hypercorrect. Issues that have affected research into the mandative subjunctive include (1) the range of triggers used and the reliance on the list from Johansson & Norheim (1988); (2) the reuse of Johansson & Norheim’s results in later studies, despite the likelihood that their interpretation of iST differs from that of later studies.

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