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The Imperfect SubjunctiveThis is the place for questions about conjugations, verb tenses, adverbs, adjectives, word order, syntax and other grammar questions for English or Spanish. |
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#1
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The Imperfect Subjunctive
I'm currently studying the imperfect subjunctive. I understand that there are two alternate endings (-ra, and -se), and I would like to know which one is the more prominent form, and the general usage of one or the other. I apologise if this has been asked before.
Thanks in advance for any help. |
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#2
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I am repeatedly told that the two forms are totally interchangeable. Maybe there are stylistic variations, but I'll let others deal with that.
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#3
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Like perfect synonyms? That's interesting.
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#4
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According to some grammars, the -se form historically is the past subjunctive, while the -ra form was an indicative tense whose use has shifted over the centuries to be an equivalent of the -se form as a past subjunctive.*
(*Edit: Perikles rightly points out that I recalled the historical details incorrectly.) Today as subjunctives the two forms are interchangeable. However, according to some grammars the -ra form is more common everywhere, continues to grow in popularity, and in some regions is used almost exclusively. Some grammars claim that the -ra form has a few indicative uses that it does not share with the -se form. 1. In some writing styles the -ra form may substitute for the indicative pluperfect: for example, "el hombre que ella conociera años antes" = "the man that she had known years before" (instead of "que había conocido"). 2. Sometimes with "haber" the -ra form replaces the conditional: "hubiera sido mejor" = "habría sido mejor" = "it would have been better". 3. In a few set phrases. Also, when making requests or invitations using "poder" or "querer", it is common to soften the request by replacing the simple present with either the -ra form or the conditional. The -se form is not used in this way. Last edited by wrholt; May 23, 2012 at 12:55 PM. |
#5
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Quote:
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#6
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It's for tasks like this that linguists create corpora. The main corpus for Spanish which I know is CORDE; comparing estuviese vs estuviera from 1950-2012 I get 422 cases vs 1117. So there the -ra form seems to be preferred.
You may want to repeat the search over a number of common verbs and applying restrictions in various of the metadata to get a more complete picture. Just be careful with ser, because fuera has another meaning... |
#7
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-ra form more used in most of América (some 70% of total speakers), -se form more used in Southern Spain (some 4% of total speakers). The rest vacillates. Everybody knows both of them and use them to avoid monotony. A great deal of educated speakers easily recognize the special uses describe by wrholt and have troubles to instantly match the versions using -se ending.
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#8
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I'd say to focus primarily on the -ra form, but still learn to recognize/understand the -se.
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