Dear Nick
Thank you for your long comments on my piece of June 15th this year, If I were running the Queen’s English Society, I would shut it down, in which you repeatedly laugh out loud at all the subjunctives you are slipping in which show me how wrong I am to have claimed they are dead in modern English.
I am puzzled, though. If you read my post more carefully, you will see that nowhere do I say that English subjunctives have disappeared. That would be a daft thing to claim because of course they exist. I even used one in my title. (Not all your examples are actually subjunctives, however. The ‘throw’ in “It is believed that he once had his guards “throw” random citizens to the lions ” is an infinitive.)
This is not your only confusion, and as you are most eager for me to respond to you, I’ll reply blow by blow: Continue reading
BadLinguistics 