Roger Mills wrote:
> >Now, it's not marked or anything, mind you. Special subjunctive verb
>forms
> >are not entirely unusual - in paricular _vore_, the past subjunctive of
>_att
> >vara_ "to be" is quite alive.
>
>That actually is the case in English too. The "had" in my sentence is not
>marked as subjunctive in any way (likewise in your neat translation),
>except
>insofar as it stands in a contrary-to-fact clause, further indicated by the
>"would" in the main clause. Just as in Swedish, apparently, the only
>English verb that has a distinctive past subj. is "to be", and that only in
>the singular. (But in absolutely correct usage, it's "be" for all persons
>in the present).

It varies form 'lect to 'lect and from speaker to speaker, but in my speech,
at least three verbs has living subjunctive forms; _vore_ "be", _ginge_,
which meant something like "if (that) were possible" (the indicative _går_
"goes" can also mean "is possible") and _finge_ (the indicative _får_ means
"may, is allowed to").

Lately, I've found myself using subjunctive forms of pretty much any old
verb, but I strongly suspect this is an artifact caused by drilling to much
German subjunctives at Uni. I shan't, however, swear that I wouldn't've used
constructions like _Toge han sig samman, så ..._ ~"If got himself together,
then ..." two years ago.

And of course there's various survivals among auxilliaries.

                                                 Andreas

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