Строй современного английского языка

The Other Moods 109


The patterns in which this is the case would seem to be the following (we will give only two of them) : Pattern No. 1:


Pattern No. 2:

As a third pattern, it would be necessary to give the sentence, in which there is no subordinate clause, e. g. I should be very glad to see him. Here, however, the distinction between the temporal and the modal meaning is a matter of extreme subtlety and no doubt many lexical peculiarities would have to be taken into account. Especially in the so-called represented speech (see p. 333) the conditions for the one and the other meaning to be realised are very intricate, as will be seen from the following extract: To the end of her life she would remember again the taste of the fried egg sandwich on her tongue, could bite again into the stored coolness of the apple she picked up from the red heap on a trestle table. ...She would never again see the country round Laurence Vernon's home as she saw it the first time with Roy. (R. WEST) A variety of factors, both grammatical and lexical, go to show that the meaning here is that of the future-in-the-past. Compare: But Isabelle could do nothing, she and Marc had been brought by the Bourges, who were now murmuring frenetically, that they would feel better at the Sporting Club (Idem), where it is hard to tell which meaning is preferable.
If we endorse the other view, that is, if we take the temporal and the modal groups "should (would) + infinitive" to be homonyms the patterns themselves will not change. The change will affect the headings. We shall have to say, in that case, that the patterns serve to distinguish between two basically different forms sounding alike. Again, just as in the case of lived and knew, this will be a matter of interpreting facts, rather than of the facts as such.
GROUPS WHICH OUGHT NOT TO BE CLASSED UNDER MODAL CATEGORIES
Among these we must mention first the groups let me go, let us go, and let him (them) go, i. e. the patterns "let + personal pronoun (in the objective case) or noun (in the common case) + infinitive' which may be used to denote (1) a decision of the 1st person sin-

110 The Verb: Mood
g ular (i. e. of the speaker himself) to commit an action, or (2) an appeal to the 1st person plural, that is to one or more interlocutors to commit an action together with the speaker, or (3) an appeal to the 3rd person (singular or plural) to commit some action.
There is the question whether groups of this structure can or cannot be recognised as analytical forms of the imperative. This question must be answered in the negative for the following reasons. The noun or pronoun following the verb let stands in an object relation to this verb. This is especially clear with personal pronouns, which are bound to appear in the objective case form: Let me go (not I), let him go (not he), etc. If we were to say that the formation "let + personal pronoun + infinitive" is a form of the imperative, we should have to accept the conclusion that the subject is expressed by a pronoun in the objective case (the nominative being impossible here), which is obviously unacceptable, as it would run counter to all the principles of English syntactic structure. This formation is therefore not an analytical form of the imperative mood, and the verb let not an auxiliary of that mood (or, indeed, of any other grammatical category). Expressions of the type let me go, let us go, let him go are therefore not in any way morphological phenomena. They belong to syntax. The imperative mood is represented by 2nd person forms only.
It might be argued that, since there are no other persons within the system of the imperative, the 2nd person is not opposed to any other person and does not therefore exist as a grammatical category. If we take this view we should have to say that there is no category of person at all in the imperative. This view is quite defensible, provided we take the system of the imperative as something existing in its own right and not within the wider framework of the verb system as a whole. If, on the other hand, we do place it in this wider framework we shall recognise that the form come (!) bears the same reference to person as the form (you) come (!) and we shall not deny it the right to be called a 2nd person form. Here, indeed, the decision arrived at will depend on the view we take of the problem on a wider scale.
MOOD AND TENSE
We have already discussed some relations between mood and tense in dealing with such forms as lived, knew, and such forms as should come, would come.
There are, however, some other problems in this field, which we have not so far touched upon.
First of all, there is the use of the future tense to denote an action referring to the present and considered as probable (not