victordugua wrote:
Hello,
I would like to understand why there is no subjunctive mood as we use "had suggested that"
Thank you!!!
Hello
victordugua,
We hope this finds you well.
Having gone through the question and your query, we believe that we can help resolve your doubt.
The subjunctive mood is used to convey information that is authoritative, imaginative, or contrary-to-fact. The verb "suggested" is typically used alongside authoritative information, meaning it is used to refer to actions that one entity has ordered or asked to be done. However, that is not the case in this context; here, "suggested" is used to convey that "the rising number of American casualties in Vietnam and the 1968 Tet Offensive"
indicated that Vietnam was an ultimately unwinnable situation for the United States. No command is being made, rather information is merely being relayed; this means that the nature of information is not subjunctive.
On a related note, even when the nature of information is subjunctive, the usage of subjunctive mood is a “preference” and not a “must”. In other words, although the subjunctive mood is preferable in certain contexts, being in the subjunctive mood does not guarantee that an answer choice is correct, nor does not being in the subjunctive mood mean that an answer choice is incorrect. Even if an answer choice maintains a correct subjunctive mood structure in a context wherein the use of the subjunctive mood is warranted, it can still suffer from an error that makes it incorrect; in such a case, an answer choice that conveys the intended meaning, albeit without a subjunctive construction, is likely to be the correct answer choice.
We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team