El subjuntivo

[Rabbitoh]

Saludos a todos...

Ojala que alguien pueda ayudarme con esto problema (que voy a escribir en ingles):

One rule of subjunctive that I learned is that the tense of the subjunctive verb within the subordinate clause must match the tense of indicative verb within the independent clause. V1 = present, V2 = present; V1= past, V2 = past.

A textbook asks to translate the following sentence into Spanish: "Are you glad that she went to Europe?" to which I wrote, "Te alegras de que ella vaya a Europa?" The textbook claims this is incorrect; that the proper subjunctive conjugation of 'ir' is 'fuera.' Huh? 'Fuera' is past imperfect. The indicative "te alegras" is in present, right? Why then would the subjunctive clause break tense? Is the rule of tense matching wrong or is the textbook's answer wrong?

I am crowd-sourcing the NiS community. Thanks in advance!

R

[Legazpi]

Your textbook is correct. I think the rule you learnt is either incorrect or refers to a certain case.

The phrase "Are you glad that she went to Europe?" implies that she has already gone to Europe some time in the past, even though the indicative refers to the present. So the correct translation is something like "¿Te alegras que fuera a europa?"

If you said "¿Te alegras que ella vaya a Europa?" then you would be saying something like "Are you glad that she is going to Europe?" (implying that she is currently going, or will go to Europe, but not that she has already been there). It's gramatically correct, but has a different meaning.

I think the rule you learnt does not apply to the use of the subjunctive in these types of subordinate clause since, as we've seen, you can have cases where the subordinate clause refers to a different time frame than the indicative.

However, perhaps with other cases where you use the subjunctive, the rule holds. E.g. when using the subjunctive to express desires, hopes, fears, doubts, etc:

I hope she goes to Europe - Espero que vaya a Europa
I hoped she went to Europe - Esperaba que fuera a Europa

In these cases both the indicative and subjunctive change with the tense.

[Rabbitoh]

L, I appreciate your clear response to my question.

The text's lessons contains sentences that keep a consistent tense pattern throughout the main and subordinate clauses -- no doubt to avoid overburdening the learner -- that I mistakenly inferred as being a grammatical necessity. After writing 50 sentences whose clauses matched present to present, past to past, I think a little sympathy is in order.

However, your advice is absolutely correct. I looked again through the textbook's rules on tense agreement and found the cause of the misunderstanding: "the lesson here is that when the verb in the independent clause is in any past tense, the present and present perfect subjunctives simply are not admissible choices... when present tense verbs are used in the independent clause, the verb in the subordinate clause can be in any tense, depending on the meaning of the verb in the main clause."

I glossed over that essential bit of the rule in favour of those 50 practice sentences that maintained a consistent tense agreement. The danger of learning by rote rather than dynamism, it seems.

Thanks again for helping me solve this small, but intensely frustrating, grammatical thorn.

Cheers,
R

[xan]

this past-with-past subjunctive, present-with-present subjunctive pattern is an empirical generalization, not a rule. It depends on the meaning you want to impart. That being said, present-with-past subjunctive is not a very common pattern. I suspect that a more common and natural way to say this in spanish would be

¿Te alegras de que haya ido a Europa?

present-with-perfect subjunctive, that is. I think that´s a lot more common. Not that present-with-past subjunctive is wrong, it's just not the common way to say it. One thing you will learn about grammar over time is that some things are not cut and dried--there is gray area, not just black and white.

I await correction from any native speaker.

[Londoner_at_heart]

Originally Posted by xan

¿Te alegras de que haya ido a Europa?

This is very good, but I would say "¿Te alegras de que se haya ido a Europa?" instead. It doesn't mean that your sentence or any of the above is incorrect, but this is the one closer to the English "Are you glad she went to Europe?". The others with apply in slightly different contexts or meanings.