English Language & Usage Asked on August 27, 2021
I was watching an old movie, The Little Rascals, and one of the lines from a kid goes:
Your Honor, may I suggest… this court rules he be put on probation.
I am not sure if be is in infinitive form because this is an example of
subjunctive mood. If so, shouldn’t rules be the verb to be written as a infinitive because it is subordinate to suggest?
In addition, if I were to rewrite this sentence, I would write it as that it ran
something like this:
Your Honor, may I suggest… this court rule that he will be put on probation.
I’ve made two changes:
suggest (that) this court rules > suggest (that) this court rule
(indicative > subjunctive/bare-infinitive)
(that) he be put > that he will be put
(subjunctive/bare-infinitive > present-tense modal plus infinitive)
I wonder whether my rewrite would be considered grammatically correct.
It's not. It's the subjunctive mood. Yes, traditionally, both rule and be should be subjunctive. The traditional sentence should therefore be "I suggest that the court rule that he be placed on probation."
Some would no doubt prefer to call that "old fashioned" rather than "traditional."
Answered by phoog on August 27, 2021
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