<p>Which would I use when forming the subjunctive? Or does it matter?
--"were"
--"have"
--"were to have"</p>
<p>ie:
--If Sunita were to finish her work early.
--If Sunita had finished her work early.
--If Sunita were to have finished her work early. </p>
<p>The study book I'm using lists three examples similar to the ones above and uses the three different formations interchangeably, just like the examples I listed above.</p>
<p>bump, Past Subjunctive anybody?</p>
<p>The three sentences all use the subjunctive (because they’re all grammatically correct and express a counter-factual). They’re just all different tenses. Subjunctive is case, not tense.</p>
<p>Can you explain when you would use each of the tenses?</p>
<p>@allyphoe: So if I was to see any of the 3 sentence formations above on the SAT, none of them would be incorrect?</p>
<p>They aren’t per se incorrect. They may or may not be appropriate for any given context.</p>
<p>If you were to finish your work early, you would be free to go home. (The finishing and going might happen in the future.)
If you had finished your work early, you could have gone home. (The chance for finishing early has already passed by.)
If you were to have finished your work early, you would have been able to go home. (Another past tense. Not sure I can put my finger on the distinction between 2 and 3, other than that 3 is more formal /stilted. )</p>
<p>If I had to pick one to be least correct, I’d pick 3, but on the grounds of awkwardness rather than error.</p>
<p>Thanks, I had a feeling that the three sentences were differently structured (and therefore appropriate only for certain circumstances), but the book I was studying from just lumped them all into one category and used them interchangeably.</p>