"But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received were true" - Is it a subjunctive?

Question

Here is a quote from a book:

But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received were true.

Why is there were instead of was in the above sentence? The only answer that comes to my mind is that this is a subjunctive.

The topic of the subjunctive was covered in the following question very well: Why is it 'come' and not 'comes' in 'it is important that he come...'?

However, my sentence doesn't belong to any of the four categories mentioned by M.A.R. in his answer to this question, so I don't think this the subjunctive. Then what is it?

I get that this is an imaginary situation (would have no way) and the second conditional. But this is all I can think of.

Answer 1

Yes, "were" is functioning as a subjunctive in that sentence. The problem is that, as you seem to be suggesting, the sentence isn't really correct: this is not a proper usage of the subjunctive, because the truth of the proposition (i.e., "the answer is true") is undetermined. I believe it would be more correct with an indicative verb:

But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received was true.

I believe this is an example of error through over-correction: we're taught in school to say "if he were", and we wind up applying the rule even where it isn't appropriate.

Answer 2

This does use a subjunctive but it is not correct. The correct subjunctive for the sentence would be "were to be" instead of "were".

It could also work with either the insertion of "had" after the "have" or change "were" to "was". That would of course either not use the subjunctive(was) or change the tense(had).

You could also use the subjunctive of receive, "were to receive" followed by "was true".

The short answer is that yes this is a subjunctive, but it is still incorrect.

Answer 3

I think the sentence is gramaticaly incorrect. The problem is the use of "would" and "received".

But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received were true.

"would" is hypothetical, which matches with the subjective use of "were", but it clashes with "received", which is real past-tense.

Better would have been:

But he has no way of knowing if the answer he received is (or was) true.

or, keeping it hypothetical (has not yet received the answer):

But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he receives were true.