tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 20 08:50:30 2006
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Re: I should kill you where you stand
- From: McArdle <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: I should kill you where you stand
- Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 08:50:05 -0800 (PST)
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- In-reply-to: <[email protected]>
QeS 'utlh <[email protected]> wrote:
ghItlhpu' mIq'ey, ja':
>>This is fine in the context of a conditional, and in fact the same thing
>>happens in at least one variety of English. If you listen to any American
>>sports broadcast, you'll invariably hear something like "if he fields that
>>cleanly, he turns the double play", where the meaning clearly is "if he
>>had fielded that cleanly, he would have turned a double play."
>
>I understand it to mean the future tense, not the past, but never mind. {{;)
You wouldn't if you heard it in context. This kind of thing is invariably said after the play in question. There's no way it could be future.
It's possible that this usage originated in instant-replay commentaries, where the announcer is describing the play as if it's actually being seen in real time, but with the benefit of hindsight. Sort of "[you and I know he's not going to field the ball cleanly, but] if he does . . . ." It would then perhaps be a species of future. If so, however, it's long since lost that connotation. You'll now hear it used right _after_ the replay of the error: "You can see that it takes [i.e., we just saw that it took] a funny hop and bounces off the heel of his glove, but if he fields it cleanly . . . ."
>No, but that's because English *has* subjunctive forms. "Would", "could" and
>"should" are all subjunctive modals, which are in contrast to their
>indicative forms "will", "can" and "shall".
This probably isn't the place for a discussion of English grammar, but I don't think it's useful to call these "subjunctive forms". Formally, they're the past tense of the modal auxiliaries. Functionally, they can be subjunctive, conditional, or even simple indicative, depending on context.
I've been trying to decide what mood I think the "should" of "I should kill you" really is. It could be conditional, as if there's a tacit protasis such as "Had I no reasons to the contrary . . .", but this is hardly possible in Standard American English, where "would" would invariably be used instead of "should". I really don't think it can be subjunctive, since English only uses the subjunctive in subordinate clauses or wishes.
Intuitively I hear it as indicative, meaning something like "I have a non-overriding moral obligation to . . . ." That is, it's a weak form of "I must" or "I need to" ("I have an overriding obligation to . . .").
This is one of the reasons why I doubt that the ST5 example is relevant to the case at hand. Another is that I'm not convinced that this example really exhibits "the semantics of the subjunctive mood". I don't remember the situation in which these lines are spoken, but abstractly they could just as easily be translated in the indicative: "If I can defeat Kirk . . . / You will be the greatest warrior in the galaxy."
And, when it comes right down to it, I just think that "I kill you" and "I should kill you" are different enough in meaning that they wouldn't be expressed by exactly the same form in any language, regardless of its modal repertoire.
Another thought has occurred to me. If "I should" is really an attenuated "I must", how about {qaHoHnISlaw'} ("It seems I must kill you")?
qavan
mIq'ey
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