English Verb Tense In The Subjunctive Mood: From The Psychological-Distance Perspective

The present study explores the use of English verbs in the subjunctive mood from apragmatic perspective. Its findings are radically distinctive from the explanation oftraditional grammar. Traditional grammar describes verb tenses in the subjunctive mood from thetime-perspective. The tense of verbs in English is primarily used to refer to the time atwhich the action denoted by the verb takes place. It is generally thought that thesubjunctive mood is expressed by past tense forms of verbs. But traditional grammar failsto explain the motivation of the subjunctive mood underlying the past tense form of verbs. Yet from a pragmatic point of view, it is observed that, apart from denoting time,verb tenses express pragmatic meanings, for tense is deictic in nature. It is this nature thatenables verb tenses to signify both temporal distance and psychological distance. Thesubjunctive mood, when viewed from the psychological-distance perspective, points fromthe deictic center to the dimension of a hypothetical, imaginary world constructed by thespeaker/writer. In elucidating the pragmatic perspective, the paper is divided into five parts. The first part is introduction. In this part, it is pointed out that the present studyadopts a pragmatic approach for explaining the verb tense in the subjunctive mood inEnglish. The concept of the psychological distance in the subjunctive mood is defined inthis part. The relationship between psychology and grammar is also accounted for brieflyherein. The second part is a review of the studies on tense as a grammatical category.Limitations of traditional descriptions concerning the subjunctive mood are pointed out:most of them are form-based analysis which do not touch on the psychological and logicalfoundation of the subjunctive mood, especially the psychological distance andpsychological reality of the speaker/writer. The third part is a review of the studies on tense as a deictic category. It analyzes therelationship between the time-perspective and the psychological-distance perspective ofverb tenses. The common ground shared by these two perspectives is the deictic nature ofverb tenses. It is concluded that this deictic nature enables verb tenses to signify thepsychological-distance of the speaker/writer. The fourth part proposes the psychological-distance model of the subjunctive mood.Psychological distance and psychological reality are analyzed on the basis of this model.Concrete examples and graphic forms are also given to demonstrate the feasibility andapplicability of the proposed new perspective. The concluding part points out that whereas the traditional approach to verb tense inthe subjunctive mood is form-oriented, the new perspective is meaning-oriented andmotivation-oriented. It delves into the psychological foundation of the subjunctive mood.Hence the subjunctive mood can be analyzed from a dual-perspective: time andpsychological-distance perspective. It is hoped to show through examples that although some experts may dismiss it astrivial, the subjunctive mood is alive and meaningful in modern English and deserves arightful place in the English grammar system.