The subjunctive in noun clauses

Abstract

This chapter explores the frequency development of the subjunctive and its competitors, namely indicatives and modal constructions, in noun clauses in a corpus covering the historical periods Old English (OE), Middle English (ME), and Early Modern English (EModE). Furthermore, it discusses the influence of the parameters date of composition, text category, prose vs poetry, noun clause function, matrix verb, and noun clause type on their distribution in the individual periods. The corpus analysis of about 2.3 thousand noun clauses attests a more or less steady frequency decrease of the subjunctive from the OE period onwards. Text category STA with legislative texts, subjunctive verbal syntagms in the matrix clause, and the clause type that-clause are identified as the factors which contributed most to the preservation of the subjunctive.