[Re-post of earlier message: didn't seem to get through the
first time; apologies if it arrives twice.]
Andre Majorel wrote:
> A French learner asked me whether "j'espère que" should be
> followed by the indicative ("j'espère que vous gagnerez") or the
> subjunctive ("j'espère que vous *gagneriez"). In this case, it's
> the indicative but a more general answer would be helpful.
>
> I thought that maybe, if "que" can be translated by "that", the
> indicative should be used but how true is that ? Any
> counter-examples ?
Unfortunately, this generalisation doesn't work. There are plenty
of cases where "que", translated by 'that', is pretty much always
followed by the subjunctive in French ("il a annoncé que...") and
there are cases where "que", followed by the subjunctive, can't
be translated by 'that' ("où que tu sois..."; "que tu viennes ou
que tu ne viennes pas"...). It's also doesn't help us of course
with translations that could just about use 'that' but where
another construction is more idiomatic in English: "le plus
im****tant est que tu sois là" -> "the most im****tant thing is
you being here".
Traditionally, "subjunctive" has been defined in terms such as the
following definition from Wikipedia:
"...a verb mood that exists in many languages [...] typically
used in dependent clauses to express wishes, commands, emotion
possibility, judgment, necessity, or statements that are contrary
to fact at present."
Well, of course the problem with this as a definition is that
it gives a list of seemingly unrelated uses, but doesn't really
get to the bottom of what the subjunctive *is*. So one possible
generalisation that some linguistis consider is that the
subjunctive is used in cases that "lack assertive force"[1],
that is, where they don't 'assert' that something took place.
Something is generally an assertion if it can be agreed with or
denied. For example, in the conversation:
- Marie a dit que Jean a démissionné.
- Oui, je sais.
the "oui, je sais", could imply "oui, je sais ce qu'elle a dit", or
"oui, je sais qu'il a démissionné". However, in the conversation:
- Le patron veut que Jean démissionne.
- Oui, je sais.
here, there's only one thing that "oui, je sais" can be acknowledging.
It can something like "oui, je sais qu'il veut que..." but it wouldn't
generally mean "oui, je sais que Jean va démissioné". In other words,
there's only one assertion. The first speaker asserts the boss's wish,
but doesn't actually assert whether or not Jean has or will be
resigning. The verb that isn't making an assertion ("démissionne") is
in the subjunctive.
The assertion analogy can be extended to many uses of the
subjunctive. It has one or two obvious problems or extra things to
clarify, for example:
- "si", a good candidate for non-assertions, virtually never governs
the subjunctive in modern French...;
- how to deal with similar-meaning pairs such as "souhaiter que..."/
"espérer que" (actually not such a problem: many French speakers
do actually say things like "j'espère que tu réussisse");
- A clause occupying the subject of a sentence pretty much always
has a subjunctive verb, whatever your argument for assertion vs
non-assertion;
- Use with many conjunctions can possibly be explained more easily
in terms of time reference.
Finally, if you'll forgive me for plugging my own web site, there's some
more detail, examples and references in the "subjunctive" section at:
http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/grammar/
Neil
[1] Aboudi, L. (2002), "Négation, interrogation et alternance
indicatif-subjonctif", Journal of French Language Studies 12.
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