Grammatical mood

It has been suggested that prohibitive mood and Talk:Grammatical mood#Merge of prohibitive mood be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since March 2007.

Part of a series on
Linguistics
Outline History Index
General linguistics Diachronic Lexicography Morphology Phonology Pragmatics Semantics Syntax Syntax–semantics interface Typology
Applied linguistics Acquisition Anthropological Applied Computational Conversation analysis Corpus linguistics Discourse analysis Determinism Distance Documentation Ethnography of communication Ethnomethodology Forensic History of linguistics Interlinguistics Neurolinguistics Philology Philosophy of language Phonetics Psycholinguistics Sociolinguistics Text Translating and interpreting Writing systems
Theoretical frameworks Formalist Constituency Dependency Distributionalism Generative Glossematics Functional Cognitive Construction grammar Functional discourse grammar Grammaticalization Interactional linguistics Prague circle Systemic functional Usage-based Structuralism
Topics Autonomy of syntax Compositionality Conservative and innovative language Descriptivism Etymology Iconicity Internationalism Internet linguistics LGBTQ linguistics Origin of language Orismology Orthography Philosophy of linguistics Prescriptivism Second-language acquisition Theory of language Terminology
Portal
v t e

In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood (or mode), which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. Many languages express distinctions of mood through morphology, by changing (inflecting) the form of the verb.

Because modern English does not have all of the moods described below, and has a very simplified system of verb inflection as well, it is not straightforward to explain the moods in English. (The English moods are indicative, subjunctive, and imperative). Note, too, that the exact sense of each mood differs from language to language.

Grammatical mood per se is not the same thing as 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, negative, 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 over 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.

It should be noted that 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.

Realis moods are a category of grammatical moods which indicate that something is actually the case, or actually not the case. The most common realis mood is the indicative mood or the declarative mood.

The declarative mood indicates that the statement is true, without any qualifications being made. It is in many languages equivalent to the indicative mood, although sometimes distinctions between them are drawn. It is closely related with the inferential mood (see below).

Found in Classical Arabic and various other Semitic languages, the energetic mood expresses something which is strongly believed or which the speaker wishes to emphasize, e.g. yaktubunn يَكتُبُنَّ ("he certainly writes").

The generic mood is used to make generalizations 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, the rabbits are fast. Use of the definite article the implies specific, particular rabbits, whereas omitting it implies the generic mood simply by default.

Ancient Greek had a species of generic mood, the so-called gnomic utterance, marked by the aorist indicative (normally reserved for statements about the past). It was used especially to express philosophical truths about the world.

The indicative 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 reading a book" or "Paul reads books".

The negative mood expresses a negated action. In many languages, this is not a distinct mood; negation is expressed by adding a particle:

• before the verb phrase, as in Spanish No está en casa;
• or after it, as in archaic and dialectal English Thou remembrest not or Dutch Ik zie hem niet;
• or both, as in French Je ne sais pas or Afrikaans Hy kan nie Afrikaans praat nie.

Standard English usually adds the auxiliary verb do, and then adds not after it: "I did not go there". In these instances, "do" is known as a dummy auxiliary, because of its zero semantic content.

In Indo-European languages, it is not customary to speak of a negative mood, since in these languages negation is originally a grammatical particle that can be applied to a verb in any of these moods. Nevertheless, in some, like Welsh, verbs have special inflections to be used in negative clauses.

In other language families, the negative may count as a separate mood. An example is Japanese, which conjugates verbs in the negative after adding the suffix -nai (indicating negation), e.g. tabeta ("ate") and tabenakatta ("did not eat").

It could be argued that Modern English has joined the ranks of these languages, since negation in the indicative mood requires the use of an auxiliary verb and a distinct syntax in most cases. Contrast, for instance, "He sings" → "He doesn't sing" (where the auxiliary to do has to be supplied, inflected to does, and the clitic form of not suffixed to derive the negative from "He sings") with Il chante → Il ne chante pas; French adds the (discontinuous) negative particle ne... pas, without changing the form of the verb.

Irrealis moods are the set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened as the speaker is talking.

The cohortative mood (alternatively, hortatory) is used to express plea, insistence, imploring, self-encouragement, wish, desire, intent, command, purpose or consequence. It does not exist in English, but phrases such as "let us" are often used to denote it. In Latin, it is interchangeable with the jussive.

The conditional mood is used to speak of an event whose realization is dependent on a certain condition, particularly, but not exclusively, in conditional clauses. 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. Thus, the conditional version of "John eats if he is hungry" is:

John would eat if he were hungry, in English;

Jean mangerait s'il avait faim, in French;

Juan comería si tuviera hambre, in Spanish.

In the Romance languages, the conditional form is used primarily in the apodosis (main clause) of conditional clauses, and also 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.

This is not a universal trait; in Finnish, for example, the conditional mood is used both in the apodosis and the protasis. An 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 English, too, the would + infinitive construct can be employed in main clauses, with a subjunctive sense: "If you would only tell me what's troubling you, I might be able to help".

The dubitative mood is used in Ojibwe, Turkish, and other languages. It expresses the speaker's doubt or uncertainty about the event denoted by the verb. For example, in Ojibwe, Baawitigong igo ayaa noongom translates as "he is in Sault Ste. Marie today." When the dubitative suffix -dig is added, this becomes Baawitigong igo ayaadig noongom, "I guess he must be in Sault Ste. Marie today." (modified from the example in the Ontario Curriculum Support Document for the Teaching of Language Patterns)

The eventive mood is used in the Finnish epic poem Kalevala. It is a combination of the potential and the conditional. It is also used in dialects of Estonian. In Finnish, there are theoretically forms such as kävelleisin ("I would probably walk").

The hypothetical mood, found in Russian, Lakota, and other languages, expresses a counterfactual but possible event or situation.

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, read that book".

Many languages, including English, use the bare verb stem to form the imperative. Other languages, such as Seri, 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").

This mood is used in some languages such as Bulgarian and Turkish to convey information about events which were not directly observed or were inferred by the speaker. It is usually impossible to translate in English. For instance, indicative Bulgarian "той отиде" and Turkish o gitti will be translated the same as inferential "той отишъл" and o gitmiş — with the English indicative "he went". Using the first two forms, however, implies very strongly that the speaker either witnessed the event or is very sure that it took place. The second pair implies either that the speaker did not in fact witness it take place, that it occurred in the some past or that there is considerable doubt as to whether it actually happened.

If absolutely necessary to make the distinction, then English construction "he must have gone" would translate a past inferential.

The interrogative mood is used for asking questions. Most languages do not have a special mood for asking questions, but Welsh and Nenets do.

The jussive mood is similar to the cohortative mood, in that it expresses plea, insistence, imploring, self-encouragement, wish, desire, intent, command, 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.

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; all forms of “Persian” language (Avestan, Old Persian, Middle Persian, New Persian), Albanian, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Japanese, and Finnish are some that do.

In Finnish, the mood may be called an "archaic" or "formal imperative", even if it has other uses; nevertheless, it does express formality at least. For example, 9th Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins with Älköön ketään pidätettäkö mielivaltaisesti, "Not anyone shall be arrested arbitrarily", where älköön pidätettäkö "shall not be arrested" is the optative of ei pidätetä "is not arrested". (Also, using the conditional mood -isi- in conjunction with the clitic -pa yields an optative meaning, e.g. olisinpa "if I only were". Here, it is evident that the wish is not, and probably will not be fulfilled.)

In Japanese the verb inflection -tai expresses the speaker's desire, e.g. watashi wa asoko ni ikitai "I want to go there". Oddly enough, this verb form is treated as a pseudo-adjective: the auxiliary verb garu is used by dropping the end -i of an adjective to indicate the outward appearance of another's mental state, in this case the desire of a person other than the speaker (e.g. Jon wa tabetagatte imasu "John wants to eat").

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 an 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 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 Sámi 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 related to 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 present and perfect tenses. The verb ole- "be" is replaced by lie, thus "(it) is probably" is lienee (not *ollee). Thus, in the perfect tense, 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 English, it is formed by means of the auxiliaries may, can, ought and must.

The presumptive mood is used in Romanian to express presupposition or hypothesis regarding the fact denoted by the verb, as well as other more or less similar attitudes: doubt, curiosity, concern, condition, indifference, inevitability. For example, Acolo s-o fi dus. ("He might have gone there") shows the basic presupposition use, while the following excerpt from a poem of Eminescu:

De-o fi una, de-o fi alta... Ce e scris şi pentru noi,

Bucuroşi le-om duce toate, de e pace, de-i război.

Be it one, be it the other... Whatever fate we have,

We will gladly go through all, be it peace or be it war.

shows the use both in a conditional clause de-o fi ("suppose it is") and in a main clause showing an attitude of submission to fate le-om duce ("we would bear").

The subjunctive mood, sometimes called the conjunctive mood, has several uses in independent 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 appears to be falling out of common use; many native English speakers do not use it. Example: "I suggested that Paul read some books", Paul is not in fact reading a book. Contrast this with the sentence "Paul reads books", where the verb "to read" is in the present tense, indicative mood. Another way, especially in British English, of expressing this might be "I suggested that Paul should read some books", derived from "Paul should read some books."

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) have definitely become archaic. 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 mood figures prominently in the grammar of Persian and 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 admirative or renarrative mood is used to express surprise, but also doubt, irony, sarcasm, etc.

In Indo-European languages, the admirative, unlike the optative, is not one of the original moods, but a later development. Admirative constructs occur in Balkan Slavic (Bulgarian and Macedonian), Albanian, Megleno-Romanian and Ukrainian Tosk Albanian. A form of the admirative, derived from the Albanian pattern, can be found in Frasheriote Arumanian. It seems that the dubitative/inferential patterns of Turkish - a non-Indo-European language - influenced Albanian and Balkan Slavic languages in this regard.

The admirative carries evidential value. Writing on the typology of evidentiality in Balkan languages, Victor Friedman says:

"As grammaticalized in the Balkan languages, evidentiality encodes the speaker's evaluation of the narrated event, often, but not always, predicated upon the nature of the available evidence. These evidentials can be of two types: Confirmative (sometimes called 'witnessed') and nonconfirmative (sometimes called 'reported', 'inferential', and/or 'nonwitnessed'). The nonconfirmatives can, in Austin's terms, be felicitous (neutral) or infelicitous. Felicitous nonconfirmatives are used for reports, inferences, etc., for which the speaker chooses not to take responsibility. An infelicitous nonconfirmative expresses either acceptance of a previously unexpected state of affairs (surprise, i.e. something the speaker would not have been willing to confirm prior to discovery, the mirative or admirative) or sarcastic rejection of a previous statement (doubt, irony, etc., the dubitative)."

Ibid., "Illustrative data (interlinear glossing is omitted to save space): [...]

Toj bil bogat! (Macedonian, nonconfirmative past)

Той щял да ме набие. (Bulgarian, doubtful future: He's going to beat me up, but I don't think that would be possible because I think that I am stronger than him)

Ама вие сте били тук. (Bulgarian, present tense: You are/have been here, but I didn't know it, I've just found out and I'm surprised at the fact)

O zenginmiş! (Turkish, nonconfirmative past)

Ai qenka i pasur! (Albanian, nonconfirmative present)

He is rich! (to my surprise; nonconfirmative refers to discovery of pre-existing state)

Ku qenka mjeshtri? (Albanian, nonconfirmative present)

Kade bil majstorot ? (Macedonian, nonconfirmative past)

Patron neredeymiş? (Turkish, nonconfirmative past)

Where is the boss? (I am surprised at his absence; Albanian can have true present meaning, Balkan Slavic/Turkish cannot)

Present and future tenses also exist for such a mood in the above-mentioned languages, but, with the exception of the Albanian true nonconfirmative present illustrated above, these "nonconfirmatives, (from perfects), always have a past reference to either a real or a putative narrated event, speech event, or state of mind. They cannot be used with true nonpast reference."

Do t'u hapka një universitet privat (Albanian: A private University will be opened - apparently, i.e. as reported by someone & to my surprise.)

Varacakmış (Turkish: He will be arriving - as told by someone)

The renarrative mood is a similar grammatical verb category that exists in some languages such as Bulgarian and Turkish. It is used to convey information about doubtful or nonwitnessed events.

• Ontario Curriculum Support Document for the Teaching of Language Patterns: Ojibwe and Cree

• List of grammatical moods
• Grammatical modality
• Alethic moods
• Gnomic
• Irrealis
• Realis
• Mirative
• Evidentiality
• Grammatical conjugation

From SIL:

• deontic modality
  • volitive modality: (imprecative mood, optative mood)
  • directive modality: (deliberative mood, imperative mood, immediate imperative mood, jussive mood, obligative mood, permissive mood, precative mood, prohibitive mood)
• epistemic modality
  • judgment modality: (assumptive mood, declarative mood, deductive mood, dubitative mood, hypothetical mood, interrogative mood, speculative mood)
• irrealis modality: (subjunctive mood)