| Grammatical categories |
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| Animacy Aspect Case Clusivity Definiteness Degree of comparison Evidentiality Focus Gender Mirativity Modality Mood Noun class Number Person Polarity Tense Topic Transitivity Voice |
Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive forms that are used to signal modality.[1] It is distinct from grammatical tense or grammatical aspect, although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages, including English and most other modern Indo-European languages, insofar as the same word patterns are used to express more than one of these concepts at the same time.
Currently identified moods include conditional, imperative, indicative, injunctive, optative, potential, subjunctive, and more. Infinitive is a category apart from all these finite forms, and so are gerunds and participles. Some Uralic Samoyedic languages have more than ten moods; Nenets has as many as sixteen. The original Indo-European inventory of moods was indicative, subjunctive, optative, and imperative. Not every Indo-European language has each of these moods, but the most conservative ones such as Avestan, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit have them all.
Not all of the moods listed below are clearly conceptually distinct. Individual terminology varies from language to language, and the coverage of (e.g.) the "conditional" mood in one language may largely overlap with that of the "hypothetical" or "potential" mood in another. Even when two different moods exist in the same language, their respective usages may blur, or may be defined by syntactic rather than semantic criteria. For example, the subjunctive and optative moods in Ancient Greek alternate syntactically in many subordinate clauses, depending on the tense of the main verb. The usage of the indicative, subjunctive and jussive moods in Classical Arabic is almost completely controlled by syntactic context; the only possible alternation in the same context is between indicative and jussive following the negative particle lā.
The distinction of affirmative and negative is not mood but polarity.[2]
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Realis moods are a category of grammatical moods that indicate that something is actually the case or actually not the case. The most common realis mood is the indicative mood. Some languages have a distinct generic mood for expressing general truths. For other realis moods, see the main article.
The indicative mood, or evidential mood, is used for factual statements and positive beliefs. All intentions that a particular language does not categorize as another mood are classified as indicative. In English, questions are considered indicative. It is the most commonly used mood and is found in all languages. Example: "Paul is eating an apple" or "John eats apples".
The generic mood is used to generalize about a particular class of things, e.g. in "Rabbits are fast", one is speaking about rabbits in general, rather than about particular fast rabbits. English has no means of morphologically distinguishing generic mood from indicative mood; however, the distinction can easily be understood in context by surrounding words. Compare, for example: rabbits are fast, versus, those rabbits are fast. Use of the definite article the usually implies specific, particular rabbits, whereas omitting it implies the generic mood simply by default. However, compare e.g. "The giraffe is the tallest land mammal living today", where the definite article does not prevent the intended generic interpretation, i.e. the predicate refers to all giraffes, not a specific giraffe.
Ancient Greek had a kind of generic mood, the so-called gnomic tense, marked by the aorist indicative (normally reserved for statements about the past). It was used especially to express philosophical truths about the world.
Irrealis moods are the set of grammatical moods that indicate that something is not actually the case. Simply put, they are any verb or sentence mood that are not realis moods. They may be part of expressions of necessity, possibility, requirement, wish or desire, fear, or as part of counterfactual reasonings, etc.
Irrealis verb forms are used when speaking of an event which has not happened, is not likely to happen, or is otherwise far removed from the real course of events. For example, in the sentence "If you had done your homework, you wouldn't have failed the class", had done is an irrealis verb form.
Some languages have distinct grammatical forms that indicate that the event described by a specific verb is an irrealis verb. Many of the Indo-European languages preserve a subjunctive mood that functions as an irrealis; some also preserve an optative mood that describes events that are wished for or hoped for but not factual.
Common irrealis moods are the imperative, the conditional, the subjunctive, the optative, the jussive, and the potential. For other examples, see the main article.
The imperative mood expresses direct commands, requests, and prohibitions. In many circumstances, using the imperative mood may sound blunt or even rude, so it is often used with care. Example: "Paul, do your homework now". An imperative is used to tell someone to do something without argument.
Many languages, including English, use the bare verb stem to form the imperative (such as "go", "run", "do"). Other languages, such as Seri and Latin, however, use special imperative forms.
In English, second person is implied by the imperative except when first-person plural is specified, as in "Let's go" ("Let us go").
The prohibitive mood, the negative imperative may be grammatically or morphologically different from the imperative mood in some languages. It indicates that the action of the verb is not permitted, e.g. "Don't you go!"
In English, the imperative is sometimes used to form a conditional sentence: e.g. "go eastwards a mile, and you'll see it" means "if you go eastwards a mile, you will see it".
Eg: "I would love you."
The conditional mood is used to speak of an event whose realization is dependent upon another condition, particularly, but not exclusively, in conditional sentences. In Modern English, it is a periphrastic construction, with the form would + infinitive, e.g. I would buy. In other languages, such as Spanish or French, verbs have a specific conditional inflection. This applies also to some verbs in German, in which the conditional mood is conventially called Konjuntiv II, differing from Konjunktiv I. Thus, the conditional version of "John eats if he is hungry" is:
Johannes würde essen, wenn er hungrig wäre is also acceptable in German.
In the Romance languages, the conditional form is used primarily in the apodosis (main clause) of conditional clauses, and in a few set phrases where it expresses courtesy or doubt. The main verb in the protasis (dependent clause) is either in the subjunctive or in the indicative mood. However, this is not a universal trait: among others in German (as above) and in Finnish the conditional mood is used in both the apodosis and the protasis. A further example is the sentence "I would buy a house if I earned a lot of money", where in Finnish both clauses have the conditional marker -isi-: Ostaisin talon, jos ansaitsisin paljon rahaa. In Polish the conditional marker -by also appears twice: Kupiłbym dom, gdybym zarabiał dużo pieniędzy. Because English is used as a lingua franca, a similar kind of doubling of the word would is a fairly common way to misuse an English language construction.
In English, too, the would + infinitive construct can be employed in main clauses, with a subjunctive sense: "If you would only tell me what is troubling you, I might be able to help".
The subjunctive mood, sometimes called conjunctive mood, has several uses in dependent clauses. Examples include discussing hypothetical or unlikely events, expressing opinions or emotions, or making polite requests (the exact scope is language-specific). A subjunctive mood exists in English, but native English speakers need not use it. Example: "I suggested that Paul eat an apple", Paul is not in fact eating an apple. Contrast this with the sentence "Paul eats an apple", where the verb "to eat" is in the present tense, indicative mood. Another way, especially in British English, of expressing this might be "I suggested that Paul should eat an apple", derived from "Paul should eat an apple."
Other uses of the subjunctive in English, as in "And if he be not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his trespass..." (KJV Leviticus 5:7) are archaisms. Statements such as "I will ensure that he leave immediately" often sound archaic or overly formal, and have been almost completely supplanted by constructions with the indicative, like "I will ensure that he leaves immediately".
The subjunctive part of the conditional version of "John eats if he is hungry" is:
The subjunctive mood figures prominently in the grammar of the Romance languages, which require this mood for certain types of dependent clauses. This point commonly causes difficulty for English speakers learning these languages.
In certain other languages, the dubitative or the conditional moods may be employed instead of the subjunctive in referring to doubtful or unlikely events (see the main article).
The optative mood expresses hopes, wishes or commands and has other uses that may overlap with the subjunctive mood. Few languages have an optative as a distinct mood; some that do are Albanian, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Japanese, Finnish, and all forms of the Persian language (Avestan, Old Persian, Middle Persian, New Persian).
Sometimes this is called a "desiderative mood", since it indicates desires. Occasionally distinctions are made between different optative moods, e.g. a mood to express hopes as opposed to a mood to express desires. (Desires are what we want to be the case; hope generally implies optimism toward the chances of a desire's fulfillment. If someone desires something but is pessimistic about its chances of occurring, then one desires it but does not hope for it.)
The jussive mood expresses pleading, insistence, imploring, self-encouragement, wishing, desiring, intention, commanding, purpose or consequence. In some languages, the two are distinguished in that cohortative occurs in the first person and the jussive in the second or third. It is found in Arabic, where it is called the مجزوم, majzum. The rules governing the jussive in Arabic are somewhat complex.
The potential mood is a mood of probability indicating that, in the opinion of the speaker, the action or occurrence is considered likely. It is used in Persian, Finnish, Japanese, in Sanskrit and in the Sami languages. (In Japanese it is often called something like tentative, since potential is used to refer to a voice indicating capability to perform the action.)
In Finnish, it is mostly a literary device, as it has virtually disappeared from daily spoken language in most dialects. Its suffix is -ne-, as in *men + ne + e → mennee "(s/he/it) will probably go". Some kinds of consonant clusters simplify to geminates. This simplification occurs progressively (*rne → rre) with the resonant consonants l, r, and s, and regressively with stops (*tne → nne) and is meant to prevent the violation of phonotactical rules concerning sonority hierarchy. For example, korjata → *korjat + ne + t → korjannet "you will probably fix", or tulla → *tul + ne + e → tullee "s/he/it will probably come". The potential mood can be used only in the present tense and perfect. The verb ole- "be" is replaced by lie, so that "(it) is probably" is lienee (not *ollee). Thus, in the perfect, which is formed with an auxiliary verb, the auxiliary verb lie is used instead of ole- as liene-, e.g. lienet korjannut "you have probably fixed" (not *ollet korjannut). In spoken language, the word kai "probably" is used instead, e.g. se kai tulee "he probably comes", instead of hän tullee.
In English, it is formed by means of the auxiliaries may, can, ought and must.
The interrogative mood is used for asking questions. Most languages do not have a special mood for asking questions, but Welsh and Nenets do.
From SIL International:
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