Subjunctive question: “I’m just questioning whether or not it were”

Question

I said something like the following to someone before and they questioned my grammar:

I'm not saying it was the right play. I'm just questioning whether or not it were.

The person I made a similar statement to thought the 'were' at the end of the sentence should have been a 'was', but I feel like 'were' is correct because it's subjunctive. It's subjunctive because there is uncertainty about whether or not the play was correct.

Am I right?

To give a little more explanation of my view on this, the first of the 2 sentences uses 'was', because I'm talking about the scenario where I am sure it's the right play and so I say it was the right play, or rather I'm saying that this scenario is not the case, but nevertheless in this hypothetical scenario, I am certain, so it is not subjunctive. To illustrate this, I write the same sentence again, but with quotes: 'I'm not saying "It was the right play".'

Incidentally, this post has just been edited by someone who clearly disagrees, as they have changed the 'were' I put in the line preceding 'Am I right?' to a 'was'. I think this is incorrect though and is another instance of what my question is about. Here is what they have changed it to, with emphasis added, as you can see above: 'It's subjunctive because there is uncertainty about whether or not the play was correct.' I think this 'was' should be 'were'. It seems to me to be a clear case of the subjunctive, since we are not certain of the correctness of the play.

Having discussed the issue in comments made to this post, I think it may be clearer to pose the problem as follows:

I was talking to my father of a discussion with a streamer earlier that day in which I'd questioned a play he made and my father questioned my grammar. What I said to my father was as follows:

I wasn't saying [to the streamer] that it was the wrong play. I was just questioning whether or not it were.

My father thought I should have used 'was' instead of 'were' as the last word. I disagree. I've changed 'right' to 'wrong' as this is more accurate.

Answer 1

We used to do this but seldom do so today

Such constructions as you are asking about were once upon a time reasonably common, beginning in the mid 1500s as Early Modern English was starting to take shape. The next few centuries in fact saw a lot of them, perhaps under the influence of Continental languages.

But as time wore on, citations of this type become harder and harder to come by, having dwindled to all but non-existent except in the stuffiest writings from any later than the early 1900s, so around a hundred years ago.

For example, Robert Hooke wrote in Micrographia of 1665:

That I might be satisfi’d, whether it were not possible to make an Artificial pore as small as any Natural I had yet found, I made several attempts with small glass pipes, melted in the flame of a Lamp, and then very suddenly drawn out in a great length. And, by that means, without much difficulty, I was able to draw some almost as small as a Cobweb, which yet, with the Microscope, I could plainly perceive to be perforated, both by looking on the ends of it, and by looking on it against the light; which was much the easier way to determine whether it were solid or perforated; for, taking a small pipe of glass, and closing one end of it, then filling it half full of water, and holding it against the light, I could, by this means, very easily find what was the differing aspect of a solid and a perforated piece of glass; and so easily distinguish, without seeing either end, whether any Cylinder of glass I look’d on, were a solid stick, or a hollow case. And by this means, I could also presently judge of any small filament of glass, whether it were hollow or not, which would have been exceedingly tedious to examine by looking on the end.

Skipping forward several centuries to the 19th century, we find in the writings of Frederick Douglass and his peers such examples as:

Indeed, it seemed somewhat questionable, whether it were better for the English to civilize Africa, or for the Bagers to send missionaries to their brethren in England!

With respect to foreign possessions, it was very doubtful whether it were the real interest of France to have any colonies at all;

And in the English translation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, we find:

.. and involuntarily, as she said this, at the moment a doubt entered her mind whether Anna really were happy.

[...]

“I see that she is happy,” he repeated, and the doubt whether she were happy sank more deeply into Darya Alexandrovna’s mind.

Although it is easy enough to find historical citations of whether it were, whether he were, or whether she were, it is rather more difficult to find any such citations from this past century, apart from reprints of older works.

Given the paucity of present-day citations, and my own sense as a living native speaker of English, I would not normally recommend the construction you are attempting, even though it is indeed one which our most elegant writers of yesteryear routinely employed long ago.

That’s because today it comes across as awkward and archaic at best — and at worst completely ungrammatical.

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Historical References

See also this answer and its reference to Visser, who covers these particular historical syntactic quirks in truly exhaustive detail. We used to do this. We seldom do so today.

Please see Visser’s An Historical Syntax of the English Language for examples of using “modally marked forms” (what Visser calls the subjunctive) in clauses governed by whether. Chaucer used it: “To assay his horn and for to know whether it were clear.” There are both present and past tense uses lavishly demonstrated there, as well as historical ones.

Answer 2

If the speaker is reasonably sure a definitive answer will be forthcoming:

• I'm not saying it was the right play. I'm just questioning whether or not it was.

(Asking a question soliciting a value judgement on a fact.)

If the speaker thinks that even hindsight might not give an indisputably correct answer:

• I'm not saying it was the right play. I'm just wondering whether or not it might have been.

The modal, not a subjunctive construction, is correct to show speaker doubt about the availability of a satisfactory answer at the time of speaking. Doubt about the veracity / accuracy of a statement or proposition is conveyed to the listener by using a modal marker (eg 'possibly'; 'probably'; 'in my opinion'; modals like 'might' / 'may').

Answer 3

The subjunctive mood helps express various states of unreality (wishes, doubts, hypothetical situations, and emotions). It is used to describe things that are not necessarily true or real, but rather things that are imagined or desired.

So in the case of the OP...

There is no doubt that there was a play.

There is also no doubt that 'you' are questioning whether or not the play is or is not 'right'.

Expressing an opinion on the rightness of the play - either way - is, by its nature, also indicative rather than 'subjunctive'.

Therefore "I'm not saying it was the right play. I'm just questioning whether or not it was."

This can be made clearer still by spelling out your phrase

"I'm not saying it was the right play. I'm just questioning if it was the right play or it was not." You would not use were in this sentence, would you?

Answer 4

In educated English, your sentence with whether it were would fit right in.

But it's not a question of "right" or "wrong". Some speakers rarely or never use what has been called for centuries "the subjunctive" while others use that form frequently. Only the miseducated would think there's something wrong with were.

Less common is whether it be but it is used, especially in legal and philosophical debate.

P.S. The use of were reveals the speaker's attitude towards the situation. Language is expressive. We don't judge the appropriateness of was/were against any objective measure. If, in the speaker's sense of things, the answer to the question "Was it proper?" is at all debatable, the speaker is licensed to say "I asked whether it were a proper thing to do".

Answer 5

The phrase, “Whether or not it were” is a choice between two absolute outcomes. Therefore it is not an unknown, or subjunctive verb. Proper use of subjunctive is a known unknown, as it were. See what I did there? If it is an unknown, unknowable, it is subjunctive. Another example is, “…as if it were true.” Where the writer clearly indicates in the content that “it”, whatever “it”is, is not true, or a manifest falsehood.