Timeline for He had to yield to the demand that he faces/face the local media?
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| Jun 29, 2023 at 14:49 | comment | added | Peter Shor | I demand that you faces is both historically and currently ungrammatical. The conjugation in the indicative is you face, he/she/it faces. There is only a difference between the mandative subjunctive and the indicative for third person singular and for the verb to be. And the mandative subjunctive is now grammatically completely unconnected with the were-subjunctive; they no longer really have anything in common. This explains how the mandative subjunctive can still be widely used in the U.S., while the were-subjective is slowly disappearing. | |
| Jun 29, 2023 at 8:37 | comment | added | RADS | @JD Thank you for adding a note for me. I know there is a distinction between prescriptive and descriptive grammar, but I didn’t know it is to such an extent. I will certainly look into the APA style guide and the others. But when you said 'imperative at its heart', you were trying to refer that it has certain characteristics of imperative mood? | |
| Jun 28, 2023 at 16:45 | comment | added | J D | @RADS So, whether or not the question that adhering to the traditional form of using an altered tense in the presence of the mandate in question is appropriate is a question of politics, not strictly, objective fact. You'll have to come to your own mind when linguistic rules set out by grammarians is excessively oppressive or excessively woke. When in doubt, appeal to the guidelines of a specific language community. For instance, psychologists rely on the prescriptions of the APA Style Guide, the University of Chicago style guide is popular, the AP has it's own, as does Stephen Pinker. | |
| Jun 28, 2023 at 16:37 | comment | added | J D | @Araucaria-Nothereanymore. Sure. 'I demand you face the media' and 'Face the media' are both imperative, and preemptively the imperative mood is not required to utter an imperative. See MW's definition 1a of imperative (n.). The phrase 'imperative at heart' implies semantic grounding, not syntactical construction. I tend to think in terms of meaning and not syntax because I'm not a compiler. | |
| Jun 28, 2023 at 16:06 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | Would you mind addressing my first comment? | |
| Jun 28, 2023 at 16:02 | comment | added | J D | There is a diffuse line between oppressive prescription, and not allowing people to run around using the language willy-nilly and impeding meaningful communication. It's simply a statement of fact that some conservatism facilitates understanding. I'm not advocating anyone lose their job, but it makes a passage clearer to an outsider to distinguish with tense what something means. I'm not advocating a return to Old English, just preserving a meaningful distinction. Norms are inescapable. Let them serve a practical purpose is all. | |
| Jun 28, 2023 at 15:58 | comment | added | J D | @Araucaria-Nothereanymore. Being a non-trivial subset implies a partition if I remember my set theory, so I'm not sure your claim is congruent with your objection. Illiterate people cannot read. Aliterate people choose not to read. Traditional, that is conservative forms of syntax perpetuate among the highly literate because they are observed and imitated. A corpus that is practiced preserves that which falls out of fashion in discourse and serves a normative function. The fancy word for that is education, which is a form of acculturation. | |
| Jun 28, 2023 at 15:53 | comment | added | J D | @EdwinAshworth have no objection to your remark, but it should be noted that articulate and literate are not the same. The former is a characterization of intelligence, and the latter of tradition. Plus, there is some utility using distinctive phraseology to indicate circumstance. We could abandon all declension and conjugation, but that only serves to constrict the semantics by placing anaphora at the fore of grounding meaning. | |
| Jun 28, 2023 at 15:38 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | There is no split between literate and aliterate readers. Aliterate readers are a subset of literate readers. Do you mean "illiterate" perhaps? | |
| Jun 28, 2023 at 15:34 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | It's not an imperative at heart. Nope. Not at all. Imperatives can't take first person subjects, or third person pronominal subjects. And conversely, negative imperatives use don't , whereas don't is impossible in a subjunctive mandate. | |
| Jun 28, 2023 at 14:15 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | Pronouncements like "This is historically ungrammatical, and should be 'face' " have been shown in previous posts to be over-prescriptive. The authors of CGEL acknowledge the fact that many articulate Anglophones. particularly in the UK, prefer to use say 'The tour guide recommends that each child keeps close to his or her parents'. | |
| Jun 28, 2023 at 13:04 | history | edited | J D | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 684 characters in body
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| Jun 28, 2023 at 12:57 | history | answered | J D | CC BY-SA 4.0 |