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If the clause is If I disturbed you:

  1. If I disturbed you, I am sorry.
  2. If I disturbed you, I would give you money.

Both of them use the past tense of disturb in the 'if-clause'

According to the subjunctive mood of past, 2 means 'As I don't disturb you, I will not give you money' (assuming the opposite of the present fact or situation: past subjunctive).

According to the indicative mood, 1 means 'I disturbed you in the past and I am sorry now.'

1 and 2 use same if clause using the same disturbed (literally the same if-clause) but has two different meanings due to different main clauses (I am sorry and I would give you money).

How do you know if a speaker says 'if-clause' with the intention of indicative or subjunctive. Do I have to wait for the main clause that follows the 'if-clause'?

If so, does the main clause determine the mood of the 'if clause'? (An important fact is that "a speaker opens his mouth and says exactly the same sound/thing").

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  • 1
    Language is always contextual. One word can get as many nuances as the contexts it is used in. An "if clause" will become indicative or subjunctive only when situated in time by a main clause, or, if the main clause is omitted for some reason, by the surrounding context.
    – fev
    Commented Dec 30, 2020 at 22:25
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    I'm afraid someone has been filling you with strange ideas. There is no "subjunctive mood of past" that determines what (2) means, nor are the meanings correct. As for how you know, you listen; different meanings are pronounced differently, with different intonations. If the sentence is written, then it's ambiguous, and you may have to guess, because the writer may have thought that it had a specific meaning because somebody told them some other rule about the subjunctive.There are a lot of them going around.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Dec 30, 2020 at 23:26
  • @fev and John Lawler, Thank you much for the advices. Understood well.
    – gomadeng
    Commented Dec 31, 2020 at 0:22
  • 1
    @JohnLawler I feel like this comes up several times a week here, but I don’t see a canonical duplicate either. Alas.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Dec 31, 2020 at 0:48

1 Answer 1

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2

Distinguish Real vs Unreal,
not Indicative vs Subjunctive

English conditional clauses like these should not be classed as “subjunctive” vs “indicative” because English doesn’t really have “moods” in any inflectional or morphological sense of that term.

Instead of moods, what English does have is modals, which with one unique exception, are what we must use whenever something is other than real. And your reals always come in exactly one of English’s two inflectional tenses, either past or present.

It is convenient to group conditionals by the nature of the verbs in their consequent clauses, which can therefore be exactly one of either real or unreal. All modals are by definition unreals.

  1. If I disturbedreal (past) you, I amreal (present) sorry.
  2. If I disturbedreal (past) you, I wouldunreal (modal) give you money.

In both your two cases, the if parts use a real verb: disturbed. It is not “subjunctive”. The reality or lack of same is indeed indeterminate until you get to the then part. At that point, the first is real and the second is unreal.

There are various other possibilities, including those with other reals and other modals alike. Remember that to make something unreal, you always need a modal (or singular were).

  1. If I disturbreal (present) her, she always becomesreal (present) upset.
  2. If I disturbedreal (past) her, she always becamereal (past) upset.
  3. If I disturbedreal (past) her, she wouldunreal (modal) always become upset.
  4. If I canunreal (modal) disturb her, she mayunreal (modal) wake up.
  5. If I wereunreal (were) to disturb her, she mightunreal (modal) become upset.
  6. If she needunreal (modal) not be disturbed, I willunreal (modal) leave her in peace.

Here’s a bit of background on this classification system. It works out much better than imagining things that English does not even have.

1. Reals

Real presents

These are actually “non-pasts”, but most people call them presents.

Except for be, these have a special inflection in only the third-person singular alone and nowhere else.

  • She disturbs me.
  • I disturb them.
  • I am disturbed.
  • You have got to be kidding!
  • He has disturbed you.
  • It has been stopped.

Real pasts

These are inflect for the past tense, with all persons and numbers the same except for be.

  • I disturbed her.
  • They disturbed me.
  • He did disturb her.
  • It had been stopped.
  • She was disturbed.
  • I was going to disturb her.
  • They were disturbed.

2. Unreals

All unreals are modal unreals except sometimes for be.

Unreals via modals

These always use one of the standard English modals plus an uninflected lexical verb following.

Additionally, there are three pairings of modals that for backshifting purposes pair a “present/non-past” version coupled with a “past” version: will/would, shall/should, and may/might.

  • I canmodal disturb her.
  • Shallmodal I disturb her?
  • He couldmodal disturb her.
  • You shouldmodal not disturb her.
  • I maymodal disturb her.
  • I willmodal disturb her.
  • I wouldmodal disturb her.
  • They mightmodal have disturbed.
  • Daremodal he disturb you?
  • One needmodal not disturb them.
  • Oughtn’tmodal you not disturb her now?

The zero modal

One other modal verb that comes into play with these uninflected lexicals is the so-called “zero-modal”. It isn’t an actual word, but we can construe its existence here because it modally marks the verb following in the very same way that a written-out modal does.

This type of modal is found only in special clause types.

  • They are insisting that I zero-modal be there early.
  • They were insisting that I zero-modal be there early.
  • God zero-modal bless you.
  • Long zero-modal live the king.
  • zero-modal Have a nice day.

Being modals albeit of the zero variety, these are all still necessarily unreals. That’s because all modals are always unreals.

Unreals via were

This occurs only with unreal were, normally the real plural past of be. It is therefore morphologically distinct from the real past plural only when it takes a singular subject.

  • Imagine it wereunreal (were) so.
  • He acted as if she wereunreal (were) here.
  • If only she wereunreal (were) here.
  • I wish this wereunreal (were) easier.
  • She would have left us a note if she wereunreal (were) ready to leave.
  • Unless she wereunreal (were) ready, she would leave us no note.
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  • Some Korean TOEFL book teaches that 'zero-modal's father is 'should' and also teaches after 'unless' we should not use subjunctive mood(unreal according to you), for example, unless, but(that), save(that), except(that),and only(that).
    – gomadeng
    Commented Dec 31, 2020 at 2:26
  • @Brandon Nowadays unless seldom takes a bare infinitive as it once did in the not-too-distant past: You must not break quarantine unless it be a matter of life and death. Nonetheless, these are all just fine: Don’t go unless she calls. Don’t go unless she happens to call. Don’t go unless she should call. Don’t go unless she should happen to call. He didn’t go unless she called. He wouldn’t go unless she called. He wouldn’t go unless she were to call. He wouldn’t go unless she happened to call. He wouldn’t have gone unless she had called. Do feel free to call those whatever you will.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Dec 31, 2020 at 4:00
  • Far too long an explanation. You risk losing your reader's attention. Incidentally, the conditional if adjuncts are not clauses but PPs.
    – BillJ
    Commented Dec 31, 2020 at 7:16

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