58 Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood
The salient interpretation of [ii] is that you have done something reckless, putting
you at risk of being killed - but in fact you weren't killed.
In [iii] you owe someone an apology: the right thing for you to do is to apologise.
In Present-day English, this use of preterite should is not perceived as semanti
cally related to present tense shall: neither BrE nor AmE speakers normally say
%Yo u shall apologise.
In [iv], interrogative clauses are used as directives: I'm asking for your help (cf.
Ch. 9, §4.4). The preterites here sound more polite and diffident than present
tense can and will.8.4 Irrealis were
English once had an inflectional mood system applying, like tense, to all
verbs. Over the centuries this has been almost entirely lost. The meaning distinc
tions are now conveyed by tense. We noted earlier the difference in meaning con
trasts between preterite and present in [61i] and [61ii]:
[61] PRETERITE TENSE
a. He loved her.
ii a. If he loved her he'd change his job.PRESENT TENSE
b. He loves her.
b. If he loves her he'll change hisjob.In [i] the contrast is straightforwardly one of time: [ia] refers to past time, [ib] to
present time. In [ii], however, the contrast is one of modality: [iia] presents his lov
ing her as a somewhat more remote possibility than [iib]. It is for this reason that we
refer to loved in [iia] as a modal preterite -a use of the preterite where the mean
ing has to do with modality, not time.
Now consider what happens when the verb concerned is be, and the subject is 1st
or 3rd person singular. One possibility is that we have a set of relationships just like
those in [61]:
[62] PRETERITE TENSE
a. He was in love with her.
ii a. If he was in love with her he'd go.PRESENT TENSE
b. He is in love with her.
b. If he is in love with her he 'Il go.Wa s in [ia] has the central preterite meaning of past time; was in [iia] is a modal
preterite.
It is also possible, however, to have the form were in place of was in [iia] but not
[ia]. In this case the temporal and modal meanings are not different meanings of a
single form: they are meanings of different forms. Was is a tense form, but this were
is a mood form. We call it irrealis, indicating that it conveys varying degrees of
remoteness from factuality:
[63] IRREALIS MOOD
a. If he were in love with her he'd
change his job.PRESENT TENSE
b. If he is in love with her he 'Il
change his job.