ve, the "unknown quantity" which we have undertaken to find is, then, the tense-retrospect shift noted in a preliminary way above, while handling the forms of the present (ie spective) subjunctive. The differential mark is unmistakable, both delimiting the present and past subjunctive in their different functional spheres (the present and the past verbal forms as such), and distinguishing the subjunctive as a whole from the indicative as a whole (the tense-retrospect shift taken in its entirety). The mark is explicit not by virtue of the grammatical system being just so many ready-made, presunmovable sets of units and forms; it is explicit due to something very important existing in addition to the static correlations and interdependencies making up the base of the system . What renders it not only distinct, but absolutely essential, is the paradigmatic relations in dynamics of language functioning. It is this dynamic life of paradigmatic connections in the course of speech production and perception that turns the latent structural differences, if small and insignificant in themselves, into regular and accurate means of expression. The tense-retrospect shift analysed within the framework of the latent system is almost imperceptible, almost entirely hidden under the cover of morphemic identity. But this identity proves ephemeral the very moment the process of speech begins. The paradigmatic connections all come into life as if by magic; the different treatments of absolutive and relative tenses sharply contrast one against the other; the imperfect and perfect indicative antagonise those of the subjunctive; the tense-retrospect shift manifests its working in explicit structural formations of contexts and environments, not allowing grammatical misunderstandings between the participants of lingual communication.
Thus, having abandoned the exhausted formal approach in the traditional sense in order to seek the subjunctive distinctions on the functional lines, we return to formality all the same, though existing on a broader, dynamic, but none the less real basis.
As for the functional side of it, not yet looked into with the past subjunctive, it evidently differs considerably from that which we have seen in the system of the present subjunctive. The present subjunctive is a system of verbal forms expressing a hypothetical action appraised in various attitudes, namely, as an object of desire, wish, consideration, etc. The two parallel sets of manifestations of the present subjunctive, ie the pure spective and the modal spective, stand in variant functional inter-relations, conveying essentially identical basic semantics and partially complementing each other on the connotative and structural lines. As different from this, the past subjunctive is not a mood of attitudes. Rather, it is a mood of reasoning by the rule of contraries, the contraries being situations of reality opposed to the corresponding situations of unreality, ie opposed to the reflections of the same situations placed by an effort of thinking in different, imaginary connections with one another. Furthermore, the past subjunctive, unlike the present subjunctive, is not a system of two variant sets of forms, though, incidentally, it does present two sets of forms constituting a system. The difference is, that the systemic sets of the past subjunctive are functional invariants, semantically complementing each other in the construction of complex sentences reflecting the causal-conditional relations of events. p align="justify"> The most characteristic construction in which the two form-types occur in such a way that one constitutes the environment of the other is the complex sentence with a clause of unreal condition. The subjunctive form-type used in the conditional clause is the past unposterior; the subjunctive form-type used in the principal clause is the past posterior. By referring the verbal forms to the past, as well as to the posterior, we don't imply any actual significations effected by the forms either of the past, or of the posterior: the terms are purely technical, describing the outer structure, or morphemic derivation, of the verbal forms in question. The method by which both forms actualise the denotation of the timing of the process has been described above. p align="justify"> The subjunctive past unposterior is called by some grammarians "subjunctive two". Since we have reserved the term "subjunctive" for denoting the mood of unreality as a whole, another functional name should be chosen for this particular form-type of the subjunctive. "Spective" can't be used here for the simple reason that the analysed mood form differs in principle from the spective in so far as its main functions, with the exception of a few construction-types, do not express attitudes. So, to find an appropriate functional name for the mood form in question, we must consider...
