Table Of ContentTHE PORTUGUESE SUBJUNCTIVE
The Portuguese Subjunctive: A Grammar Workbook is the frst book devoted exclusively
to understanding and mastering this challenging area of Portuguese grammar.
The clear structure guides students through the six subjunctive tenses, providing
them with concise and accurate explanations accompanied by a range of exercises
to test and consolidate learning. Each chapter is designed to help students progress
from simple to more complex use of the language, with instructions initially set
in English before moving to Portuguese, and exercises progressing from simple
application to more advanced translation and ‘compare and contrast’ tasks.
This grammar workbook is ideal for intermediate to advanced learners of
European or Brazilian Portuguese who wish to master the use of the subjunctive. It
can be used as a supplementary in-class text, as well as a resource for independent
study.
Luís Gomes (b. 1971) is Camões Lecturer in Portuguese Studies at the University
of Glasgow, UK.
Maria Madalena Gonçalves (b. 1952) is a researcher at the Centre for Lusophone
and European Literatures and Cultures (CLEPUL) at the University of Lisbon,
Portugal.
THE PORTUGUESE
SUBJUNCTIVE
A Grammar Workbook
Luís Gomes and Maria Madalena Gonçalves
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Luís Gomes and Maria Madalena Gonçalves
The right of Luís Gomes and Maria Madalena Gonçalves to be identifed
as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gomes, Luís, (Linguist), author. | Gonçalves, Maria Madalena,
author.
Title: The Portuguese subjunctive : a grammar workbook / Luís Gomes,
Maria Madalena Gonçalves.
Description: London ; New York : Routledge, 2021. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifers: LCCN 2021015668 (print) | LCCN 2021015669 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367441784 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367441791 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003008118 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Portuguese language—Subjunctive. | Portuguese
language—Grammar—Problems, exercises, etc.
Classifcation: LCC PC5153 .G66 2021 (print) | LCC PC5153 (ebook) |
DDC 469.5/6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015668
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015669
ISBN: 978-0-367-44178-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-44179-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-00811-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003008118
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
Foreword vii
Acknowledgements viii
Preliminary chapter 1
1 I ntroduction 1
2 T he subjunctive in context 5
3 A note on past participles in the perfect
subjunctive tenses 9
PART I
The simple tenses of the subjunctive 11
1 The present subjunctive 13
1.1 Morphology 13
1.2 Using the present subjunctive 15
1.3 Exercises 18
2 The future subjunctive 30
2.1 M orphology 30
2.2 U sing the future subjunctive 31
2.3 E xercises 33
3 The imperfect subjunctive 44
3.1 M orphology 44
3.2 U sing the imperfect subjunctive 46
3.3 E xercises 46
vi Contents
PART II
The perfect tenses of the subjunctive 63
4 The present perfect subjunctive 65
4.1 Morphology 65
4.2 Using the present perfect subjunctive 65
4.3 Exercises 67
5 The future perfect subjunctive 80
5.1 Morphology 80
5.2 Using the future perfect subjunctive 80
5.3 Exercises 81
6 The pluperfect subjunctive 92
6.1 Morphology 92
6.2 Using the pluperfect subjunctive 92
6.3 Exercises 94
Answer key 104
Appendix: Present subjunctive spelling changes 124
Bibliography 132
Index 134
FOREWORD
At the inception of this book lay an earlier work by Maria Madalena Gonçalves and
the late Maria Helena Schambil. It consisted of a sebenta, or apostilha, that is to say,
a series of lecture notes and exercises on the Portuguese subjunctive (laboriously
typed up by Maria Helena’s husband, Peter Schambil), in the early 1990s at King’s
College, London. It was written for the beneft of students of advanced Portuguese
there. Over the years copies of this material were also used at the University of
Oxford, University of Manchester, and the University of Glasgow (our past stu-
dents may recognise some of its content).
However, we have long felt that this work needed to be updated and presented
to a wider public. Thus, the present workbook is unquestionably a departure from
the earlier work. A careful process of research on the use of the subjunctive has
gone into it, informed by decades of refection on the teaching of the subjunctive.
All chapters have been revised, updated, and greatly extended. From the original
work we retained the structure, some examples, and the overall intention. We have
revised the texts, found others, and created further exercises relevant to a twenty-
frst-century audience.
To date, all our eforts and endeavours to contact Peter Schambil have been
unsuccessful. Nonetheless, we felt it was important to acknowledge here Maria
Helena’s initial work. It is our belief that she would be proud to know that her
earlier writings were inspirational to us.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To our dear colleague, the late Maria Helena Schambil, a heartfelt thank you.
We are deeply indebted to the following authors for their material included in
this book: Fernando Nobre, Mário Rui Vieira, Pedro Lemos, Tiago Pitta e Cunha,
and Vítor Belanciano—thank you for your exemplar use of the subjunctive and
unwavering support for this project.
For their kind permission to publish extracts of material under their care in
this book, we would like to thank Alexandra Prado Coelho, on behalf of the fam-
ily estate of Eduardo Prado Coelho; Isabel Anselmo and the newspaper Público
(Lisbon, Portugal); Míriam Campos, of Agência Rif (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil),
and Grana Drummond, on behalf of the family estate of Carlos Drummond de
Andrade; Raquel Freire Zangrandi and the magazine Piauí (São Paulo, Brazil); Sara
Belo Luís, Visão Solidária magazine, and its parent company Trust in News (Lisbon,
Portugal); and Sónia Afonso, GESCO, the newspaper Expresso, and its parent com-
pany Impresa Publishing Group (Portugal). To Carlos Rocha, of Ciberdúvidas da
Língua Portuguesa, for his generous advice and learned insights: bem-haja!
Texts used without authorial reference are by Maria Madalena Gonçalves.
Last, but not least, to our editor, Rosie McEwan, for the guidance and support
that lead this project to fruition.
A todos, muito obrigado.
PRELIMINARY CHAPTER
PRELIMINARY CHAPTERPRELIMINARY CHAPTER
1 I ntroduction
1.1 I n the mood
Any human language, by the very changeable nature of the world it tries to repre-
sent, is a system that is in perpetual change and mutation. In attempting to explain
these complex and changing linguistic structures, grammarians devise rules for
every possible variation in existence, in the hope that it be a template against which
future language utterances are set as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ by comparison. These gram-
matical rules can be very useful to a language learner (e.g., verb endings, or how
to form plurals, etc.); however, it is also true that the vastness of this subject leads
to levels of great complexity in grammatical terms. This often intimidates language
learners who, by and large, simply want to be able to say what they mean to say in
the target language.
Herein lies the crux of the challenge encountered by so many learners of Portu-
guese across the world when faced with the subjunctive: that this mood is expected
to be no more than a complex set of rules governed by trigger words and neat for-
mulae which, when eventually mastered, will produce fawless Portuguese. How-
ever, any exceptions to these rules and trigger words (for there are plenty) will,
inevitably, cause confusion and exasperation on the learner. What is often lacking
is the awareness that, even if not apparent, there is always a semantic reason for the
subjunctive (conveyed by these trigger words when present). In fact, if you, the
learner, take a step back and be aware of the mood of a verb clause as the intention
of the will of the speaker, we hope that the subjunctive will become clearer from
where you stand.
Modern grammarians consider the subjunctive as one of three verbal moods in
Portuguese (the other two being the indicative and the imperative). Historically,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003008118-1
