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If I was born? If I had been born?
For starters, the names "present subjunctive" and "past subjunctive" really have nothing to do with actual tense or aspect; rather, they are named so because they are very similar to the present and past indicative forms. They have specific areas of usage in English which really cannot be correlated with their names.
As for whether such are subjunctive, look at the subjunctive mood in German for comparison, which is quite similar to what I have described in English except that it's used far more extensively there in German. What you seem to be thinking of here as "subjunctive" is actually conditional rather than subjunctive, which is commonly expressed in English with "would" or in German with "würde".
The question of whether something is a subjunctive mood or not is not a question of only with clear, well-defined curves for this in all cases. Also, one must remember that the English present and past subjunctives are not very different at all from his German colleague, except that there are no changing past subjunctive outside of the words "to" and "to have" Today, unlike with a greater number of German verbs. However, the way the present subjunctive is used for regular verbs in the English language is similar to how it is in the languages German, if it is marked for such verbs in the third person singular, with the suffix "e" but as "T", as the German first person singular, and even many German verbs today still no clear past subjunctive, which separated from their preterites.
But although the present subjunctive only special forms for the word "ETHZ", as with "too" in German, English, and the past tense is just too much "ETHZ", "have", "Service", Modal verbs, several strong verbs, and some other verbs, the umlauts, I have not heard that someone does not have a German subjunctive. If anything, English subjunctive seem to be very similar to what German subjunctive if you carved it away only clearly defined in the third person singular, for the present subjunctive, and for the ETHZ "and", "The past tense. Just because a subjunctive mood is clearly bent only in a limited number of cases does not make it not a subjunctive mood.
[originally posted as Travis; changed by moderator]
The main thing is that any normal language verb has a clear distinction between present subjunctive and not in the third person singular, simply because it shows the suffix -"(e)s" in cases of such verbs. Although it is not of such. For this, you say things like "You should not do it, otherwise he do that." instead of "You should not do so, otherwise he does that." But yes, I would say that "if", and then "have" is probably the word, which can be used in the most recent of the English language today, whatever dialect is used in specific.
The previous "Travis" was not actually the real Travis, for the record.
oops, pal How many Travis do we have?
One, but unfortunately trolls on here sometimes pretend to be other individuals, and there are no actual user logins which would prevent such in place,
this is known as the ''shifting of the tenses''...
it works well in English and (Brazilian) Portuguese
Present:
I am = Eu sou...
Hypothetical wish in present
If I was/were... = Se eu fosse...
(I would do... = Eu iria/ia fazer...)
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Past
I was = Eu fui/era
Hypothetical past wish:
If I had been... = Se eu tivesse sido
(I would have done... = Eu teria feito...)
If I were born... does not make sense at all.
BORN is one of the participles that cannot be used as adjective in present...
So THE PIZZA IS ORDERED can mean 1. the pizza has been ordered (just now); 2. the pizza is ordered (every day)...but I AM BORN is ridiculous...
it means I AM BORN (regularly, every day)...
You say I WAS BORN...So, you should say IF I HAD BEEN BORN EARLIER, I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN TO KNOW MARYLIN MONROE...
not, If I was born earlier, because it would lead you to assume one says ''I am born'' instead of ''I was born''....
it's about using shifting of the tenses and not about using pluperfect...
-She told me she would do it.-
We have -future-in-the-past- here and not conditional.
I'm sorry, but you still have not disproved this:
<< There's no reason that the past subjunctive couldn't be used for the past as well as the present. >>
Who claims that a remote wish in the past requires "If I had been" instead of "If I were"? It sounds like an arbitrary and artificial rule to me, and it's one I haven't heard of.
- Kef
can anybody make an assurance about this? an assertion, that IS that for sure, I am really confused right now, my book says A, but Iv heard B, when I asked you guys that you have suggested C, D, E. English is hilarious...
what about ''If I were to be born''
''The pluperfect subjunctive
Since the "past subjunctive" is not a true past tense, it uses as its past tense what is structurally its perfect aspect form. This past tense is known as the past perfect subjunctive or pluperfect subjunctive; it is formed using had (the past subjunctive of to have) plus the verb's past participle.
The pluperfect subjunctive is used like the past subjunctive, except that it expresses a past-tense sense. So, for example:
* If I had known (yesterday), I would have done something about it.
* If I had seen you, I definitely would have said hello.
* I wouldn't be here if he hadn't helped me.
When used in the construction of a counterfactual statement as in the examples above, it is paired with the conditional perfect viz. "If I had [not] X, then I would [not] have Y". The (arguably) canonical example of the counterfactual actually eschews the pluperfect subjunctive: If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake. This should, of course, be If I Had Known… .
If a clause is in a past tense, then a clause subordinate to it cannot be in the past subjunctive, though it might be in the pluperfect subjunctive; however, if it is in a present tense, then a clause subordinate to it might be in either of the two, depending on meaning.
All that said, the pluperfect subjunctive is often replaced with the past subjunctive in colloquial speech, a substitution that is commonly considered incorrect. (See prescription and description.)
(Note that by contrast, the present perfect subjunctive — that he have done — while logically and theoretically possible, is not much used in modern English.) ''
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctive_mood
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