The English Konjunktiv II

Abstract

This chapter examines the syntax and semantics of the English Konjunktiv II (K2) construction. Use of the K2 is restricted to an informal register of English; it is replaced by the past perfect in the standard, more formal, register. It occurs only in a subset of the syntactic environments in which the past perfect occurs, however, and is associated with a strongly counterfactual interpretation (primarily counterfactual conditionals and complements to wish-class verbs). Morpho-syntactically, K2 resembles the past perfect, insofar as it contains the preterit form of the auxiliary have (namely, had) followed by the past participle. K2 differs from the past perfect, however, in that an additional particle occurs between had and the past participle; this particle is phonologically a weak enclitic attached to had, and has been analyzed variously as a reduced form of the auxiliary verb have (– ’ve) or as a preposition (of) or particle (a); thus the past perfect form had gone corresponds to the K2 had’ve gone or had of gone. I analyze K2 syntactically as a subjunctive perfect form, where subjunctive mood is conveyed by the preterit affix –ed, and the perfect functions as a past polarity item signaling the presence of a covert past tense. The type of subjunctive mood that occurs in the K2 is distinct from the mandative subjunctive mood that occurs in the complements of demand/ask class verbs. Both types of subjunctive are licensed strictly locally, in contrast to the subjunctive mood licensed by negation in languages such as French. I suggest that this is related to the modal force of the subjunctive in these contexts. The particle of/have in the K2 is a subjunctive polarity item, disambiguating the subjunctive perfect from the indicative past perfect.