Subjunctive?

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Fractal: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 183; Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2010 1:02 am; Location: Switzerland; Thanked: 5 times

Subjunctive?

by Fractal » Sat Sep 17, 2011 3:34 am

They have found evidence to suggest that the animal is descended from a mammal.

"suggest" is a word, which expresses demand/request/recommendation and therfore the subjunctive mood must be used!

in the above sentence, why one must not use the subjunctive form "be" instead of "is"?

thx a lot

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Sat Sep 17, 2011 3:34 am

crick: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 125; Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:11 pm; Thanked: 8 times

by crick » Sat Sep 17, 2011 6:18 am

Besides the grammatical rules, we need to look at the meaning of the sentence.

Subjunctive case is used when one person wants the other to do something. Here, it doesn't look like that.

They have found evidence to suggest that the animal be descended from a mammal. -- suggests that somebody needs to get the animal descend from the mammal.