7

Consider:

I would rather the walls remain painted in a neutral tint.

Is this proper use of 'I would rather..', without an infinitive immediately following it?

EDIT This suggests that 'I would rather ...' is either followed by an infinitive or by an object (?) + past tense if you would want to include other people. But not the use I propose.

mvexel
  • 1,583
  • 5
  • 14
  • 20
  • 1
    This is a good example of a misleading grammatical title. This sentence has an infinitive in it, but it's normally treated as if it were a tensed verb in the "subjunctive", which of course is not correct. – John Lawler Jul 08 '12 at 22:24
  • @TimLymington - that question deals with the (non-grammatical) construction "I rather" creeping into use as a substitute for "I would rather". Not the same question at all. – MT_Head Jul 08 '12 at 22:26
  • I can't figure out what "without an infinitive" is supposed to mean here. This question certainly isn't a dup as indicated, because OP here does have a verb in "would". The example is unremarkable, and I think the question is General Reference. – FumbleFingers Jul 08 '12 at 22:27
  • Without an infinitive immediately following it. – mvexel Jul 08 '12 at 22:30
  • @mvexel: I'd rather you'd said that in the question. What makes you think there's anything odd about following rather with a [pro]noun? – FumbleFingers Jul 08 '12 at 22:35
  • Fair enough - I changed the title to better reflect what the question states. – mvexel Jul 08 '12 at 22:57
  • Again, it's not a matter of what follows what. It's a matter of what happens to the clause. If it's a that-clause, or if it's a B-configuration infinitive, it's gonna have a subject between would rather and the (infinitive) verb in the complement. – John Lawler Jul 08 '12 at 23:05
  • I think what John Lawler is saying is that "remain" is an "infinitive", notwithstanding the fact that some people would call it "subjunctive". But are you seriously saying you've never heard anyone say anything like "I'd rather you* didn't do that"*? I still can't figure out what you see as the problem here. – FumbleFingers Jul 08 '12 at 23:07
  • BTW, the link got messed up in my comment above. It should point to this meta answer, specifically my last comment below it. – John Lawler Jul 08 '12 at 23:07
  • Perhaps the problem is that rather is not normally a predicate. – John Lawler Jul 08 '12 at 23:08
  • I had heard about the usage, 'I would rather...', but never had the courage to use it. For me it sounds incomplete. – Ram Pillai Feb 07 '20 at 10:27

3 Answers3

12

This sentence is a proper use of would rather. And it contains an infinitive.

Would rather is an idiomatic predicate that means prefer, and has many of the same syntactic affordances and restrictions as prefer, although would rather doesn't use the infinitive complementizer to, while prefer requires it. Both are negative triggers and can trigger NPIs, for instance,

  • I would rather do anything else.
  • I prefer to do anything else.

In addition, both predicates can take a that-clause complement with an untensed verb:

  • I would rather (that) he sit down immediately.

  • I prefer (that) he sit down immediately.

  • *I would rather that he sits down immediately.

  • *I prefer that he sits down immediately.

The sentence in question is simply an untensed (i.e, infinitive) verb form in such a complement clause, with the that complementizer deleted:

  • I would rather (that) [the walls remain painted in a neutral tint].

Note that if you use a form of be instead of remain, you get the infinitive form be:

  • I would rather (that) [the walls be painted in a neutral tint].
  • *I would rather (that) [the walls are painted in a neutral tint].

There are a lot more infinitives around than one might suspect from Miss Fidditch's class.

John Lawler
  • 107,887
  • Given that "I would rather" indicates a wish, the subjunctive is not inappropriate, surely? How do you tell the difference between "be" as untensed indicative and "be" as subjunctive, since the forms are the same? – Andrew Leach Jul 08 '12 at 23:11
  • 1
    You don't. Because if you can't tell the difference, the difference isn't there. They're both the same form. They just have a number of different uses, is all. Like the or of or that or which or to. "The subjunctive" is like phlogiston; an early attempt at explanation that didn't turn out to work. – John Lawler Jul 08 '12 at 23:17
  • Except that the subjunctive does exist in constructions like "If I were...", so it might just as well exist here too. That is, once "that" is introduced, the mood changes. "He sit" and "the walls be" (or even "the walls were") are subjunctive constructions. I guess I disagree that a subject should have an infinitive indicative verb: perhaps I'm just reactionary. – Andrew Leach Jul 09 '12 at 00:00
  • There aren't many other choices in English. Except for be, there's only 5 verb forms available: Infinitive, 3SgPres, Past, PastPart, PresPart. That's it. Which one is the subjunctive? In German or French or Spanish, which do have subjunctive, there are several forms for every verb that are always subjunctive. That's many thousand subjunctive verbs; English doesn't have a single one. – John Lawler Jul 09 '12 at 00:27
  • This is hardly “untensed”: I would rather it were otherwise. Smells awfully past subjunctive to me. – tchrist Jul 09 '12 at 01:16
  • It's a past tense verb form, all right. If you want to call it subjunctive, you're adding nothing to the term, because nothing is added to the form. – John Lawler Jul 09 '12 at 04:43
  • The fact that the form doesn't change doesn't mean the word is not different. Take the verb "to read" for example and parse "You read it" (pronunciation differs, but form doesn't). I lament the minimisation of the language. [And I'm now going on holiday, so I shall be quiet] – Andrew Leach Jul 09 '12 at 06:48
  • 2
    @Andrew Leach ‘. . . in English, “past subjunctive” forms are indistinguishable from past tense forms. We will therefore say that English does not have a past subjunctive verb inflection . . . The reason is that we cannot contrast a clause containing a “past subjunctive verb” with a clause containing a past tense form of the verb’. (‘Oxford Modern English Grammar’ by Bas Aarts) – Barrie England Jul 09 '12 at 06:49
  • 2
    @Andrew Leach: As for the ‘were-subjunctive’, Huddlelston and Pullum don’t call it a subjunctive at all, using ‘irrealis’ instead. ‘Traditional grammar calls our “irrealis” a “past subjunctive” . . . But there are no grounds for analysing this “were” as a past tense counterpart of the “be” that we find in constructions like “It’s vital that he be kind to her”.’ – Barrie England Jul 09 '12 at 06:54
  • @AndrewLeach, Re: read. Pronunciation *is* form. /ɪfayraytɪŋɡlɪʃðɪswe/, it's still English; spelling is mere technology, not language. Don't confuse the car with the driver. – John Lawler Jul 09 '12 at 12:58
  • The trouble with using a bare infinitive is that it does not spring to the tongue of most speakers. I would be happy with 'I would rather the walls remained painted...' A slight stylistic concern is that the sentence contains two similar consecutive past forms. – Barry Brown Jul 10 '12 at 18:31
  • Since /dp/ is a hard consonant cluster to pronounce, probably most English speakers intending to say 'I would rather the walls remained painted...' would wind up saying [ri'mẽ:'pʰẽɾəd], no matter what their intention. How you want to spell that is your business. – John Lawler Jul 10 '12 at 19:06
  • @John Lawler, What about 'I'd rather he sat down immediately'? – Rocky May 19 '21 at 08:30
1

Those so-called untensed verbs that - according to what is written above - could be admitted, are actually subjunctives. Their use in English is very rare and fading away but they're still subjonctives. The confusion is easy at first sight, because they keep the infinitive form whatever or whoever is the subject : I be, you be, he be, we be, you all be, they be.

Philippe Bleus
  • 11
  • 1
0

The use of the word rather as a verb meaning prefer is sometimes called verbal rather. The use you describe is one of a number of well-attested uses of verbal rather. There are actually two structures that your sentence might have:

  1. I would rather they remain painted...
  2. I would rather (that) they remain painted…

There are a number of other uses of verbal rather that are quite widespread throughout North American English. However, these uses vary in interesting ways across speakers and dialects. For more information, see the discussion of this phenomenon at the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project website, on our page for Verbal rather: https://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena/verbal-rather.

choster
  • 43,403
Yale Grammatical Diversity
  • 69