MDDM Subjunctive Spaces

[Paul Mackin]

I think what I might have been referring to as a SIDE ISSUE was my own nagging
feeling of reverse progress in having moved from West to East rather than
recapitulating the course of American Empire. Unfortunately there's never any
compensating relief of feeling less implicated  in the mapping and polluting of
our dear country. :-  But anyway I do see that the subjunctive  to declarative
sentence cited by Rob is key to the paragraph and the book.   I will  have to
think a bit more about the linguistic imperialism idea. True the paragraph uses
grammatical terms--declarative and subjunctive--to suggest the closing off of
the what-might-have been and the being stuck with the already-determined. But
does the tendency to drop  the use of subjunctive moods from language imply any
kind of savaging of possibilites in the world outside grammar. If there is any
world out side of grammar??? Interesting idea.

With regard specifically to mapping,  in the two sentences

J'ai peur que M & D dressent une carte.

and

I'm afraid that M & D are drawing a map.

does the French use of the subjunctive give the sentence a different meaning
than adheres to the English version? Charles DeGaulle would have said yes. But
would we p-listers?

This whole discussion reminds me and probably everyone else of the famous Turner
thesis about the closing of the American Frontier which was officially declared
to have happened in 1893.  Frederick Jackson Turner's idea was that the
expanding frontier was what gave  America it specialness.  And now it was no
more. Or was it? But let's not get into that.



Anyway. Nice ideas, Rob.

        P.