subjunctivityn.

1848 M. Harrison Rise, Progress, & Present Struct. Eng. Lang. vi. vi. 282 If in these cases we substitute was in the place of were, the meaning of both sentences would be changed, and that subjunctivity..would cease to exist.

1886 Mod. Lang. Notes 1 53/1 The general notion of subjunctivity is one that is common to all languages, but each has its own peculiar way of treating the dependent clause.

1996 J. Smith Hist. Stud. Eng. ii. vii. 117 In Present-Day English, only a few fossil formal subjunctives remain, such as..If I were you etc.;..the usual pattern is to express subjunctivity through the use of the auxiliary verbs may and might.

2010 B. Zelizer About to Die i. 14 Linguistics..defines subjunctivity as the mood or voice of a verb used to express condition..or statements that are contrary to fact,..‘what could be’ rather than ‘what is’.

1969 S. R. Delany in Extrapolation 10 61 The subjunctivity level for a series of words labeled naturalistic fiction is defined by: Could have happened.

1969 S. R. Delany in Extrapolation 10 62 Fantasy takes the subjunctivity of naturalistic fiction and throws it in reverse... Could not have happened.

1979 Diss. Abstr. Internat. A. 40 1484 I have employed the term ‘subjunctivity’ to designate certain dramatic properties indicative of the playwright's manipulation of his audience.

1995 B. Landon Sci. Fiction after 1900 (2002) i. 9 It is the notion of subjunctivity that best accounts for the relationship in SF..between the reader's world and the world of the SF semblance.

2006 Sci. Fiction Stud. 33 452 There is not much distance anymore between the facticity of realism and the subjunctivity of science fiction.