Can someone come up with a good definition of what a "subjunctive" mood actually is?
I found several different definitions so far, including:
"Subjunctive is the term given to special verb forms or markers that obligatorily occur in certain types of subordinate clause" (Bybee & al. The Evolution of Grammar: Tense Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World, as quoted by Jouko Lindstedt, Mood in Bulgarian and Macedonian (University of Helsinki)
"The subjunctive is (...) a feature of the utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude toward it." (Wikipedia)
I'm trying to figure out two things:
1. How to explain to my student what the French subjunctive is (I usually tell him "you use this when you want to convey your personal opinion or a certain possibility or with some constructions that require it" - but this is not good enough because then it gets confused with the conditional.
2. Whether I should call the following forms in Bulgarian subjunctive, potential or something else:
Искам да направя. (I want to do.)
Мога да отида. (I can go.)
Трябва да се подпише. (He/she must sign.)
With those, the conjugated verb actually takes a special form (направя, отида, подпише). It is neither an infinitive (there are no infinitives in Bulgarian) nor the conjugated indicative form. It agrees with number and person. It could be called potential since none of those actions has actually happened. Maybe it could be called subjunctive depending on the definition.