Mood of verb in extended conditional

You have words - now what do you do with them?
Audiendus
Wordmaster
Posts: 908
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 6:08 pm
Location: London, UK

Mood of verb in extended conditional

Postby Audiendus » Thu Jan 19, 2023 11:37 am

Consider the following sentence:

If I were being pursued by someone who was/were determined to kill me, I would be terrified.

This is a second conditional with a relative clause contained in the antecedent. Under strict grammatical rules, the verb after "I" should be in the past subjunctive ("were"). But what about the verb after "who"? Should that be in the subjunctive too? The indicative mood ("was") sounds more natural, but it is generally considered wrong to use the past indicative where (as here) there is no reference to past time.

Which do you consider strictly correct – "who was" or "who were"?

User avatar
Slava
Great Grand Panjandrum
Posts: 8040
Joined: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:31 am
Location: Finger Lakes, NY

Re: Mood of verb in extended conditional

Postby Slava » Thu Jan 19, 2023 2:36 pm

I'd cheat and just go with 'someone determined to kill me'.
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.


Return to “Grammar”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 15 guests