Theme 15. The verb: the category of mood
Plan
1. Modality. Means of expressing modality.
2. The Mood as a verb form of expressing Modality.
The Problem of the category of mood.
The traditional viewpoint of three moods:
a) The Indicative
b) The Imperative
c) The Subjunctive
A. I. Smirnitsky’s theory of Moods.
L. S. Barkhudarov about the category of Mood.
Other theories of Mood.
Modality and Mood
In the preceding lectures about verbs you have learned four factors that affect the verb: tense, aspect, timecorrelation ororder and voice. In this lecture the fifth and the last factor is discussed. It is Mood. Mood refers to the way the speaker or writer regards a sentence – factual or non-factual. Is the speaker describing a reality? Is the speaker or writer expressing a request or command? Or does the writer’s statement express a non-factual situation like a supposition, a hypothesis, a recommendation, or a condition that is contrary to the fact?
Mood is the verb form of expressing Modality which is usually treated as the attitude of the speaker or writer towards the content of the sentence. It may be expressed by different means lexical and grammatical (both in English and Russian): grammatical – by mood forms; lexical – modal words: возможно, вероятно, наверное, кажется, по-видимому; certainly, maybe, perhaps, probably, possibly, surely etc.; modal verbs – мочь, уметь, хотеть, желать, долженствовать и т.д. – can, may, must etc.; modal particles – авось, едва ли, пожалуй и т.д. – as if, as though; by intonation. The intonation is pitch variations and patterns in spoken language, which has the important function of conveying attitude.
Modal words express the speaker’s evaluation of the relation between the statement made in the sentence and reality. The speaker’s evaluation may be of different kinds, i.e. the speaker may express various degrees of certainty, doubt, desirability relevant to the situation expressed in the sentence. Modal words are invariable part of speech. They do not enter any phrases but stand outside them. Their syntactical function is that of parenthesis. They may also be a sentence in themselves, in which case they are used to answer a general question:
Will you help me? – Certainly.
| Certainty | Supposition |
| of course, indeed, surely, decidedly, really, definitely, naturally, no doubt | perhaps, maybe, probably, obviously, possibly, evidently, apparently |
The three moods that may express reality, request or command or a non-factual situation like a hypothesis, a recommendation, or a condition contrary to the fact are the Indicative, the Imperative, and the Subjunctive:
I have studied very hard. indicative
Study hard! imperative
|
It is necessary that he study hard. If he studied harder, he would pass the course.
Realization of the mood in English
The Indicative
The indicative, which expresses statements perceived as a fact or describing a reality, is the most widely used mood. In fact, most sentences that you have studied so far have been in the indicative mood. It denotes actions with different time reference and different aspective characteristics. Therefore it has a wide variety of tense and aspect forms in the non-passive or passive voice forms.
e.g. Stephanie went to the store yesterday.
Jennifer goes to the library every day.
Jim will leave tomorrow.
Charles is studying. (progressive)
Trent has played with the computer for an hour. (perfect)
The movie was filmed in Hawaii. (passive voice)
They elected Beth class president. (non-passive)
The Imperative
The imperative mood in English is represented by one form only, viz. (come!).
It differs from all other moods in several important ways: it has no person, number, tense or aspect distinctions and is limited in its use to one type of sentence only, viz. imperative sentences. As a rule, a verb in the imperative has no pronoun acting as subject. However, the pronoun may be used in emotional speech: “But Tessie, –” he pleaded, going towards her. You leave me alone!” she cried loud loudly. These are the essential peculiarities distinguishing the imperative from the other moods. If one accepts the definition of mood given above, there would seem to be no ground to deny that the imperative is a mood.
When one comes to the subjunctive, one comes to a very difficult set of problems. The chief difficulty lies in the absence of a straightforward mutual relation between meaning and form. Sometimes the same external series of signs will have two (or more) different meanings depending on factors lying outside the form itself and outside the meaning of the verb; sometimes, the same modal meaning will be expressed by two different series of external signs.
The first of these two points may be illustrated by the sequence we should come which means one thing in the sentence: e.g. I think we should come here again tomorrow (should come = ought to come); it means another thing in the sentence: e.g. If we knew that he wants us, we should come to see him (here we should come denotes a conditional action, i.e. an action depending on certain conditions), and it means another thing again in the sentence: e.g. How queer that we should come at the very moment when you were talking about us! (here we should come denotes an action which has actually taken place and which is considered as an object for comment).
The second of the two points may be illustrated by comparing the two sentences: “I suggest that he go” and “I suggest that he should go”.
It is quite clear that one shall arrive at different systems of English moods. This difficulty appears to be one of the main sources of that wide divergence of views which strikes a student of English when he starts on the chapter on moods.
A natural solution of the problem is to combine the two approaches (the one based on the meaning and the one based on the form). But the problem is how they should be combined.
Matters are still further complicated by the choice one has to make between polysemy and homonymy: e.g. He lived here five years ago. If he lived here, he would come at once. In the sentences of the first type the form ‘lived’ is the past tense of the Indicative Mood. The second type ‘lived’ admits of two interpretations: a) it is the same form of the past indicative which has acquired a different meaning in this particular context, or else the form ‘lived’ is the form of some other mood, which happens to be homonymous with forms of the Past Indicative, but they are basically different.
Another problem is that of auxiliaries of Mood in Modern English: the verbs ‘should’ and ‘would’ are auxiliaries expressing unreality. But the question is less clear with ‘may’: e.g. Come close that I may hear what you say or May you be happy!
All these considerations make the problem of mood in Modern English extremely difficult to solve. They seem to show that there is no solution universally acceptable. Owing to the difference of approach to the problem, grammarians have been vacillating between 3 moods (traditional), 6 (A. I. Smirnitsky) and 16 (M. Deutschbein).
A. I. Smirnitsky is one of those who take into consideration both the form and meaning. He admits of four moods let alone the Indicative and the Imperative moods: Subjunctive 1; Subjunctive 2; The Suppositional and the Conditional Mood.
According to A. I. Smirnitsky, be and were belong to Subjunctive I and II while the other linguists treat them as Present Subjunctive and Past Subjunctive. Subjunctive I shows the action as possible, probable, non-factual, but not contrary to reality.Subjunctive II shows the action as contrary to reality. Should + infinitive; would + infinitive belong to Conditional and Suppositional Moods. Should + infinitive expresses supposition, an action which is not very likely to take place. It is used in sub-clauses, introduced by if (not conditional clauses), e.g. If you should meet him, tell him to come; and subjunctive clauses of purpose (supposition → purpose). Sometimes, Subjunctive I and the Suppositional Mood express the same meaning.
The Conditional Mood used in the main clause of a complex sentence with a subjunctive clause of condition, expresses the consequence, not condition, and doesn’t differ much from supposition. A. I. Smirnitsky himself is aware of this contiguity of meanings and speaks of a fine difference in meaning between Subjunctive II and the Conditional Mood.
L. C. Barchudarov takes an extreme stand as to the Subjunctive Mood. According to his theory, there is no Subjunctive Mood because there are no forms expressing it. It is the Indicative and the Imperative Mood forms that express subjunctive meanings. The traditional synthetic forms do not differ from the forms of the Imperative Mood (be, go, know); the meanings they render are semantically identical with the imperative mood as regards their grammatical meaning, hence their frequent use in the function of expressing volition: “Go” in I suggest that you go there is an imperative form in a complex sentence. “Knew”, “came” etc. in I wish I knew him better are past tense forms of the Indicative Mood. Their meaning is conditioned not by the morphological structure, but by the syntactical conditions (a type of subjunctive clause). The forms should/would + infinitive traditionally considered analytical, are nothing of the kind, but they have no interrupted morphemes and should be considered free syntactical combinations of modal verb + infinitive. The form “were” in I wish he were with us doesn’t fit in the system. But according to L. C. Barchudarov, this is the only difference from the past tense form of the Indicative, “was” being used more and more often. The Subjunctive Mood forms in English are non-existent.
Thus, both in this country and abroad there is no exhaustive answer to the question of nomenclature and inventory of the Subjunctive Mood forms.
References:
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10. M. Y. Bloch. A Course in Theoretical English Grammar. Ch. 17. Mood, pp 185-202.
11. L. L. Iofik, L. P Chakhoyan, A. Y. Pospelova. Readings in the Theory of English Grammar. – Л.: Просвещение, 1981, стр. 82-87.