Grammatical mood

Irrealis moods

Irrealis moods or non-indicative moods are the set of grammatical moods that indicate that something is not actually the case or a certain situation or action is not known to have happened. They are any verb or sentence mood that is not a realis mood. They may be part of expressions of necessity, possibility, requirement, wish or desire, fear, or as part of counterfactual reasoning, 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 irrealis grammatical verb forms. Many Indo-European languages preserve a subjunctive mood. Some also preserve an optative mood that describes events that are wished for or hoped for but not factual.

Common irrealis moods are the conditional, the subjunctive, the optative, the jussive, and the potential. For other examples, see the main article for each respective mood.

Subjunctive

The subjunctive mood, sometimes called conjunctive mood, has several uses in dependent clauses. Examples include discussing imaginary or hypothetical events and situations, expressing opinions or emotions, or making polite requests (the exact scope is language-specific). A subjunctive mood exists in English, though it is not an inflectional form of the verb but rather a clause type which uses the bare form of the verb also used in imperatives, infinitives, and other constructions. An example of the English subjunctive is "Jill suggested that Paul take his medicine", as opposed to the indicative sentence "Jill believes that Paul takes his medicine".

Other uses of the subjunctive in English are archaisms, as in "And if he be not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his trespass..." (KJV, Leviticus 5:7). Statements such as "I will ensure that he leave immediately" often sound archaic or formal, and have been largely supplanted by constructions with the indicative, like "I will ensure that he leaves immediately".

Some Germanic languages distinguish between two types of subjunctive moods, for example, the Konjunktiv I and II in German.

¹ In modern usage, the imperfect indicative usually replaces the imperfect subjunctive in this type of sentence.

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).

Conditional

The conditional mood is used for speaking of an event whose realization is dependent upon another condition, particularly, but not exclusively, in conditional sentences. In Modern English, this type of modality is expressed via a periphrastic construction, with the form would + infinitive, (for example, I would buy), and thus is a mood only in the broad sense and not in the more common narrow sense of the term "mood" requiring morphological changes in the verb. In other languages, verbs have a specific conditional inflection. In German, the conditional mood is identical to one of the two subjunctive moods (Konjunktiv II, see above).

In the Romance languages, the conditional form is used primarily in the apodosis (main clause) of conditional sentences, and in a few set phrases where it expresses courtesy or doubt. The main verb in the protasis (dependent clause) is usually in the subjunctive or in the indicative mood. However, this is not a universal trait and among others in German (as above), Finnish, and Romanian (even though the last is a Romance language), the conditional mood is used in both the apodosis and the protasis. A further example is a sentence "I would buy a house if I earned a lot of money".

• Irish has conditional marking in both clauses: d'íosfadh 'would eat, would have eaten' and beadh 'would be, would have been', along with a specific irrealis conditional dá 'if', which contrasts with the realis conditional má 'if' (i.e. Ithfidh sé má bhíonn ocras air. 'He'll eat if he is hungry').
• In Finnish, both clauses likewise have the conditional marker -isi-: Ostaisin talon, jos ansaitsisin paljon rahaa.
• In Polish (as well as in eastern and other western Slavic languages), the conditional marker -by also appears twice: Kupiłbym dom, gdybym zarabiał dużo pieniędzy.
• In Hindi, the conditional markers -ता (tā), -ती (tī), -ते (te) and -तीं (tī̃) (agreeing in gender and number with the subject and the direct object) comes twice: मैं घर खरीदता अगर बहौत पैसे कमाता। (maiṁ ghar kharīdatā agar bahaut paisē kamātā). The conditional (or contrafactual) form in Hindi corresponds to perfect conditional of Romance and the Germanic languages. So, the sentence literally translate to "I would have bought a house if I earned a lot of money."

Due to English's status as a lingua franca, a common error among second-language speakers is to use "would" in both clauses. For example, *"I would buy if I would earn...". In Dutch, for instance, inserting zouden "would" in the if-clause is not considered grammatically incorrect: ik zou een huis hebben gekocht, als ik veel geld zou verdienen.

Optative

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, Hungarian, Kazakh, Japanese, Finnish, Nepali, and Sanskrit.

Imperative

The imperative mood expresses direct commands, prohibitions, and requests. In many circumstances, using the imperative mood may sound blunt or even rude, so it is often used with care. Example: "Pat, do your homework now". An imperative is used for telling 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, Hindi, and Latin, however, use special imperative forms.

• In English, the second person is implied by the imperative except when first-person plural is specified, as in "Let's go" ("Let us go").
• In Romance languages, a first person plural exists in the imperative mood: Spanish: Vayamos a la playa; French: Allons à la plage (both meaning: Let's go to the beach).
• In Hindi, imperatives can be put into the present and the future tense. Imperative forms of Hindi verb karnā (to do) are shown in the table belowː

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. For example, "Don't you go!"

In English, the imperative is sometimes used for forming a conditional sentence: for example, "go eastwards a mile, and you'll see it" means "if you go eastwards a mile, you will see it".

Jussive

The jussive, similarly to the imperative, expresses orders, commands, exhortations, but particularly to a third person not present. An imperative, in contrast, generally applies to the listener. When a language is said to have a jussive, the jussive forms are different from the imperative ones, but may be the same as the forms called "subjunctive" in that language. Latin and Hindi are examples of where the jussive is simply about certain specific uses of the subjunctive. Arabic, however, is a language with distinct subjunctive, imperative, and jussive conjugations.

Potential

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 Finnish, in Japanese, in Sanskrit (where the so-called optative mood can serve equally well as a potential mood), in Northern Wu, and in the Sami languages. (In Japanese, it is often called something like tentative, since potential is used for referring 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 affix is -ne-, as in *men + ne + e → mennee "(he/she/it/they(sg)) will probably go".

In Hungarian, the potential is formed by the suffix -hat/-het and it can express both possibility and permission: adhat "may give, can give"; Mehetünk? "Can we go?"

In English, it is formed by means of the auxiliaries may, can, ought, and must: "She may go."

Presumptive

The presumptive mood is used to express presupposition or hypothesis, regardless of the fact denoted by the verb, as well as other more or less similar attitudes: doubt, curiosity, concern, condition, indifference, and inevitability. It is used in Romanian, Hindi, Gujarati, and Punjabi.

In Romanian, the presumptive mood conjugations of the verb vrea are used with the infinitive form of verbs. The present tense and the past tense infinitives are respectively used to form the present and the past tense of the presumptive mood.

In Hindi, the presumptive mood conjugations of the verb honā (to be) are used with the perfective, habitual, and progressive aspectual participles to form the perfective presumptive, habitual presumptive, and the progressive presumptive moods. The same presumptive mood conjugations are used for present, future, and past tenses.

Note:

1. The translations are just the closest possible English approximations and not exact.
2. Only masculine conjugations are shown for Hindi.

Hypothetical

A few languages use a hypothetical mood, which is used in sentences such as "you could have gone", representing something that might have happened but did not.

Inferential

The inferential mood is used to report unwitnessed events without confirming them. Often, there is no doubt as to the veracity of the statement (for example, if it were on the news), but simply the fact that the speaker was not personally present at the event forces them to use this mood.

In the Balkan languages, the same forms used for the inferential mood also function as admiratives. When referring to Balkan languages, it is often called renarrative mood; when referring to Estonian, it is called oblique mood.

The inferential is usually impossible to be distinguishably translated into English. For instance, indicative Bulgarian той отиде (toy otide) and Turkish o gitti will be translated the same as inferential той отишъл (toy otishal) and o gitmiş — with the English indicative he went.^[1] Using the first pair, 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 remote past or that there is considerable doubt as to whether it actually happened. If it were necessary to make the distinction, then the English constructions "he must have gone" or "he is said to have gone" would partly translate the inferential.

Interrogative

The interrogative (or interrogatory) mood is used for asking questions. Most languages do not have a special mood for asking questions, but exceptions include Welsh, Nenets, and Eskimo languages such as Greenlandic.

Deontic mood vs. epistemic mood

Linguists also differentiate moods into two parental irrealis categories: deontic mood and epistemic mood. Deontic mood describes whether one could or should be able to do something. An example of deontic mood is: She should/may start. On the other hand, epistemic mood describes the chance or possibility of something happening. This would then change our example to: She may have started. To further explain modality, linguists introduce weak mood. A weak deontic mood describes how a course of action is not recommended or is frowned upon. A weak epistemic mood includes the terms "perhaps" and "possibly".

Moods in Oceanic languages

Pingelapese

Pingelapese is a Micronesian language spoken on Pingelap Atoll and on Pohnpei, an island in the eastern Caroline Islands. The auxiliary verbs e and ae are found in Pingelapese and, though seemingly interchangeable, are distinct particles with different uses. The particle e is used when expressing high certainty and ae when expressing lower certainty. These function as evidential markers, shaping the epistemic tone of a sentence without affecting its direct translation into English. The following example illustrates the difference between e and ae when applied in the same sentence:

Ngaei

1S.SUB

rong

hear

pwa

that

Soahn

John

e

HEV

laid.

fish

"I heard because John was fishing (and I am certain about it)."

Ngaei

1S.SUB

rong

hear

pwa

that

Soahn

John

ae

LEV

laid.

fish

"I heard that John was fishing (but I am not certain about it)."

The particle ae can also be used to form interrogative sentences. This follows from its evidential function; in the same way as it marks a statement as uncertain, it can extend to questioning the truth of a proposition entirely. The following sentence is an example:

Soahn

John

ae

LEV

laid?

fish

"Does John fish?"

Reo Rapa

The language we know as Reo Rapa was created as a result of the introduction of Tahitian to the Rapa monolingual community. Old Rapa words are still used for the grammar and structure of the sentence or phrase, but most common content words were replaced with Tahitian. The Reo Rapa language uses Tense–Aspect–Mood (TAM) in their sentence structure such as the imperfective TAM marker /e/ and the imperative TAM marker /a/.

For example:

e

IPFV.TAM

hina’aro

like

na

DEIX

vau

SG

tō

DEF

mei’a

banana

ra

DEIX

'I would like those bananas (you mentioned).'

Mortlockese

Mortlockese is an Austronesian language made up of eleven dialects over the eleven atolls that make up the Mortlock Islands in Micronesia. Various TAM markers are used in the language. Mood markers include the past tense hortative (marking encouragement or to urge) aa, the hortative kɞ which denotes a polite tone, min or tin to stress the importance of something, and the word tɞ to denote warning or caution. Each of these markers is used in conjunction with the subject proclitics except for the aa marker.