Friday 8 January 2016

grammar - What verb form should be used in 'that' clauses after words expressing personal reactions and judgments? Subjunctive or modal?

The American way would probably use "would" instead of "should".




It's surprising that he would say that to you.




EDIT: I wouldn't know where to begin to find such a source, but as a native American English speaker I can tell you with confidence that in order to express surprise over the fact that someone did something, the structure is "I can't believe [x] would [y]", "can't believe" being an idiomatic hyperbole for "it's really surprising".



"Should" is pretty much exclusively used to describe something that a person "ought to do" ("You should do your laundry today") or an expected result "this should be accurate".



The subjunctive "Should you need me, I will be here" is considered archaic in American English.



Your edit:




I'm sorry you should forget my birthday.




sounds entirely foreign to me. If they forgot my birthday, I would say "I'm sorry you forgot my birthday". If they haven't yet forgotten my birthday, but I want to indicate that I would be displeased if they did, I would say "I would be disappointed if you forgot my birthday."



Generally speaking if it's regarding an event that did in fact happen, we wouldn't use the subjunctive, preferring a past tense. After all, the subjunctive is for conditional structures. If it actually happened it's not conditional. The only exception I can think of to that is the case I gave above "I can't believe [x] would [y] (implied: but obviously [x] did)".



I'm not entirely certain that I'm reading your first example correctly though:




It's surprising that he should say that to you.




The more accurate analog of this sentence might be:




It would be surprising if he said that to you.


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