me, listening to First Burn for the umpteenth time: ooooh, look at that subjunctive! happy little subjunctive!

Okay so at 1:41 in this song a line goes "Heaven forbid someone whisper he's part of some scheme"

Normally, in English, we'd say "someone whispers" not "someone whisper", but here, "whisper" seems okay!

What's up with that? It's the elusive English subjunctive!

Hello and welcome to my late-night thread about the subjunctive, apparently.

Linguists know how to party.

So, you probably know that verbs have tense, which refers to their relationship with time. Past, whispered; present whisper.

But verbs also do ～＊～ ｏｔｈｅｒ ｓｔｕｆｆ ～＊～

One of those other things is voice. (Voice is not actually relevant tonight)

ᴀᴄᴛɪᴠᴇ: Hamilton's enemies 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒅 the secret
ᴩᴀꜱꜱɪᴠᴇ: the secret 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒅 (by Hamilton's enemies)
ᴍɪᴅᴅʟᴇ: the secret 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒅 (through the air)

From this example we learn two things:

1. Unicode math fonts are GOLD for linguistics example sentences.
2. English is NOT GOLD for distinguishing between different VERB THINGS using the form of the verb itself.

But!

Other Indo-European languages DO distinguish between more VERB THINGS by actually changing the form of the verb, and Old English used to do this too!

So it's not as weird as it might seem at first to go digging for this stuff in English

Anyway, tense is pretty straightforward, voice isn't so bad either, aspect is another VERB THING which is also complicated so I'm not getting into it here (but it's the thing where you might have heard of a verb being called ᴩᴇʀꜰᴇᴄᴛ or ɪᴍᴩᴇʀꜰᴇᴄᴛ)

The subjunctive is none of these things. The subjunctive is a MOOD.

Or to put it in internet terms, the subjunctive is a BIG MOOD

A mood, goes the classical definition, is a grammatical feature of verbs that expresses the attitude of the speaker towards what they're saying.

But don't get too excited and think that means we get to have a grumpy mood and a happy mood and a schadenfreude mood...

The vast majority of verbs are in the indicative mood, the garden-variety, vanilla mood of 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 (or 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨, or 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘦, etc)

(The reason we differentiate between tense, voice, etc is because they STACK)

Indicative verbs in First Burn are a dime a dozen. Here are just a few of them (courtesy of https://genius.com/Lin-manuel-miranda-first-burn-lyrics)

From the moment I 𝒔𝒂𝒘 you
I 𝒌𝒏𝒆𝒘 you 𝒘𝒆𝒓𝒆 mine

𝑫𝒐 you 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 what Angelica 𝒔𝒂𝒊𝒅
When I 𝒕𝒐𝒍𝒅 her what you'𝒅 𝒅𝒐𝒏𝒆?

Another mood is imperative!

𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒅 back, 𝒘𝒂𝒕𝒄𝒉 it burn
Just 𝒘𝒂𝒕𝒄𝒉 it all burn

And when the time comes
𝑬𝒙𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒊𝒏 to the children

And of course the negative imperative:

𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 another step in my direction
I can't be trusted around you
𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 you can talk your way
Into my arms, into my arms

The imperative is associated with commands/orders, but here we need to make a point about the FORM versus the FUNCTION

You can commands without the imperative (I order you to step back) and you can have an imperative that doesn't feel command-y (Come in, make yourself at home)

The final mood in English is the subjunctive (other languages have more!)

The classic definition is that it expresses "various states of unreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgement, opinion, obligation, or action that have not yet occurred"

But that's...kinda hard to wrap your head around. The best way is to see it in action:

Heaven forbid someone 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒓 (SUBJUNCTIVE)
Your enemy 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒔 (INDICATIVE)

More subjunctives:

I insist that Hamilton 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒓
I suggest that H not 𝒔𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎
It is important that H 𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌 less
Burr asks that H 𝒔𝒎𝒊𝒍𝒆 more
Eliza burns the letters in order that they not 𝒃𝒆 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅

That last one is a negative passive subjunctive, swoon

A couple things to notice here. One is that the subjunctive of "whisper" is just... "whisper"

So much of the time you can't even tell whether something is subjunctive or indicative.

Heaven forbid I whisper.
Heaven forbid you whisper.
Heaven forbid we whisper.

Welp.

The subjunctive is only visible if:

The verb is "be" (Heaven forbid I be whispered about)
The verb is negated (Heaven forbid I not scream)
The subject would make the verb take -s in the indicative (Heaven forbid someone whisper)

^only one of the above has to apply in order for the subjunctive to be visible, btw

Which makes the subjunctive so rare that people often just don't use it. After all, one can always just say "Eliza burns the letters so that they aren't read" which is a perfectly good indicative. There's almost always a way to rephrase and avoid the subjunctive.

But sometimes, the metre and the rhyme scheme and the old-timey setting align just perfectly, and someone says "let's put a happy little subjunctive up here!"