I guess it depends on what you think counts as the subjunctive; must it be a discrete verb form, or can it be a meaning, however expressed? If the latter, don’t all languages then have a subjunctive, even though it may not be a grammatical form, in that all languages can express a wish, irrealis, and so forth?
Subjunctive in Slavic Languages
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@Bestiola that was an awesome reply! Both that "odoh" and mainly the explanation about Bulgars! I know I must sound ignorant now (and given my former interest about the country, though mainly the language), but that's really mind blowing! 
I had no idea Bulgars weren't just our "typical slavic brothers" as one would point to other slavs (though each [modern] Slavic country has its own fair share of ethnic mixing with some other groups, true). And thanks also for all the links, I appreciate it!
I had no idea Bulgars weren't just our "typical slavic brothers" as one would point to other slavs (though each [modern] Slavic country has its own fair share of ethnic mixing with some other groups, true). And thanks also for all the links, I appreciate it!
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No problem! Well they mixed with the Slavic populations already living there, so it's not just Turkic blood in them, but yeah, historically speaking, they're closer to Tatars or any Turkish tribe than to any of us, Slavic brethren@Bestiola that was an awesome reply! Both that "odoh" and mainly the explanation about Bulgars! I know I must sound ignorant now (and given my former interest about the country, though mainly the language), but that's really mind blowing!
That's why I started this thread since I'm trying to figure out the status of Istroromanian's subjunctive in comparison to Croatian. That romance language has almost completely lost the morphological traits of romance subjunctive (să + verb in subjunctive), instead, it's using "neca" (from Croatian) "neka" plus indicative. It has some relicts in the verb to be - that is, "a fi", but due to its loss of morphology, Kovačec, who's the world's best expert on Istromanian, says it doesn't have it anymore. But yeah it's still there, just expressed through other means, which is very much like Croatian (as I said, literally translated from Croatian). That's why I wanted to figure out the position and status of the subjunctive in Slavic languages, and Croatian since if Croatian has it, then Istroroanian has it too. In 2012. there was one dissertation regarding syntax in Istroromanian which briefly mentioned the use of the subjunctive in all its historical dialects, and it said that even if it doesn't have it like the rest of them, it's still present, even if expressed differently.
In this thread, aspect was mentioned a few times, as a way of expressing subjunctive in Russian for example. What's remarkable, Istroromanian has acquired aspect in its verbs, but not fully. And the way things are going, it won't make it to become a fully quasi Slavic language since it's very close to extinction.
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No, according to Weiss (2009) it's every identifiable future. The 1st and 2nd conjungation future endings also continue the subjunctive of the root aorist of *bʰuHₓ (> *bʰu̯eti > bit).
How many cases are there in Russian according to this line of thinking, counting all the prepositions?
With my previous reply I tried to make it clear that in linguistics, the subjunctive is not a semantic category ("meaning"), nor cognitive, but a formal one. And that no formal category of the subjunctive has been distinguished in Slavic to my knowledge. The concept of syntactic case is of course used in linguistics, but conflating it with morphological case to say that English has 98 cases is what bloggers used to do on livejournal in the 2000's to blow everyone's minds.
The Russian aspect does not directly express any of the subjunctive's meanings. Tlepolemus simply called the "hypothetical" ('I would say') use of the subjunctive "the subjunctive", and then said that it requires the perfective aspect. Again, they're confusing form and meaning here and additionally using the heuristic "if it translates with something called X in another language, therefore it's X in every language" beyond reasonable measure. In Russian itself, there's no limitation on which aspect бы goes with, and neiter are the conditional and modal uses strictly distinguished - they both express the irrealis modality. Thus the imperfective 'я бы этого не делал' means "I wouldn't do that/be doing that" (Tlepolemus' subjunctive, everyone else's modal/irrealis expressing an advice) and the perfective 'если бы я этого не сделал, ничего бы не вышло' means "If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have made it work" (Tlepolemus' conditional). And 'шёл бы ты' means "would you piss off". So even if we wanted to describe Russian grammar using Spanish terminology, Tlepolemus' generalisation would still be incorrect.
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Yes, I understand. What I meant was the functions of the subjunctive still occur, but I don't know what to call that—the semantic categories the subjunctive comprises, such as conditions, wishes, etc.
Sure, I too struggled to find what to call it, settling on 'modal', 'modal use'. But as with Vulgar Latin for example, I find that in such cases it's best to come up with some adhoc terminology that you can actually stand behind instead of adopting a generalisation wrought by generations of misuse. For example, you say the subjunctive comprises conditions, but this isn't true of either Latin or Romance - the latter has a whole separate formal category of the conditional (whose forms continue the Latin subjunctive only in the pluperfect, in most Italian varieties limited to forms of essere I think).
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Romance languages have a conditional, but surely Latin uses the subjunctive there?
Yeah, ok so here's yet another level of terminological confusion: the Romance 'conditional' is not about expressing conditions ('if X happens then Y happens'), but more or less correspond to the Russian irrealis modality and the German Konjunktiv 2 (ich hätte gesagt). In addition however, it expresses reported speech ('allegedly') and corresponds to Konjunktiv 1 (er sage, es sei gesagt). Both of these are the functions of the Latin sub/conjunctive, only I don't think it's possible to write a news article entirely in the subjunctive to express 'allegedness' like you can in German or Italian. But in actual Latin conditional sentences there's no restrictions on the use of mood, and notice that the Romance conditional mostly continues the indicative. Also the past sujbunctive forms in a number of varieties (eg Castilian) continues either the indicative or the subjunctive pluperfect (cantara, cantas(s)e), a variation found already in Latin when expressing past contrafactuality in nisi-type sentences.
No, considering that Meglenoromanian near the border with Ukraine and some Romanian dialects near the Serbian border developed aspect but didn't lose what's left of their subjunctive, I'd say no, gaining aspect doesn't cause loss of the subjunctive at the morphological level. At least it doesn't in Romanian dialects.
I wish I did, but do let me know if you find such a thing! I'd be very interested to read it.Bestiola dixit:
I've often wondered about this 'subjunctive particle', e.g. R бы, whether it's possible it was itself a subjunctive or some other non-indicative mode at one time. Wiktionary seems to say (by not saying) that it < the aorist indicative, in which case the IE *bhuHd is a perfect fit.
Incidentally, my Lithuanian grammar calls the tariamoji nuosaka 'modus coniunctivus', but it is clear even at a glance that the forms evolved from the IE u-stem infinitive (the L supine); the 3rd sg. is identical (dirbtų) with it (something in the way Polish made the clitic forms paradigmatic, like chciąłbyś). And so, I venture to say that this loss of the subjunctive was a Balto-Slavic phenomenon, very ancient indeed.
But the theories of influence from Turkic or even some Indo-Aryan substrate are compelling. Keep investigating & report back to us!
Aha! So the development within Romance as if from amare habeo is some kind of folk etymology? Or is it really what happened and it merely displaced the inherited amabo?Anbrutal Russicus dixit:
The Slavic langs evidently had this construction also, as is proven in the Codex Marianus. One sees Greek futures rendered, e.g., имѣтъ и(д)ти.
That is very interesting, thanks! I will
it turned out it was my prof's idea (I couldn't find anything about it, so I did some research in Romanian) but it doesn't work, in Romanian at least. Maybe it does in some other languages.
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