The Category of Mood

§ 224. Mood is the grammatical category of the verb reflecting the relation of the action denoted by the verb to reality from the speaker’s point of view.

In the sentences He l i s t e n s attentively; L i s t e n attentively; You w o u l d have l i s t e n e d attentively if you had been interested, we deal with the same action of listening, but in the first sentence the speaker presents the action-as taking place in reality, whereas in the second sentence the speaker urges the listener to perform the action, and in the third sentence the speaker presents the action as imaginary.

These different relations of the action to reality are expressed by different mood-forms of the verb: listens, listen, would have listened.

§ 225. There is no unity of opinion concerning the category of mood in English. Thus A.I.Smirnitsky, O.S.Akhmanova, M.Ganshina and N.Vasilevskaya find six moods in Modern English (‘indicative’, ‘imperative’, ‘subjunctive I’, ‘subjunctive II’, ‘conditional’ and ‘suppositional’), B.A.Ilyish, L.P.Vinokurova, V.N.Zhigadlo, I.P.Ivanova, L.L.Iofik find only three moods – ‘indicative’, ‘imperative’ and ‘subjunctive’. The latter, according to «B.A.Ilyish appears in two forms – the conditional and the subjunctive. L.S.Barkhudarov and D.A.Shteling distinguish only the ‘indicative’ and the ‘subjunctive’ mood. The latter is subdivided into ‘subjunctive I’ and ‘subjunctive II’. The ‘imperative’ and the ‘conjunctive’ are treated as forms outside the category of mood.

G.N.Vorontsova distinguishes four moods in English: 1) ‘indicative’, 2) ‘optative’, represented in three varieties (‘imperative’, ‘desiderative’, ‘subjunctive’), 3) ‘speculative’, found in two varieties (‘dubitative’ and ‘irrealis’) and 4) ‘presumptive’.

In general the number of English moods in different theories varies from two to seventeen.

In this book the indicative, imperative and subjunctive moods are considered.

§ 226. The difficulty of distinguishing other moods from the indicative in English is connected with the fact that, barring be, they do not contain a single form which is not used in the indicative mood. At the same time the indicative mood contains many forms not used in other moods. The subjunctive mood is richer in forms than the imperative mood.

So the meaning of the three moods are distinguished in the language structure not so much by the opposition of individual forms (as is the case in the opposemes of other categories), as by the opposition of the systems of forms each mood possesses. By way of illustration let us compare the synthetic forms of the lexeme have in the three moods.

This is why it is difficult to represent the category of mood in opposemes, like other categories.

In speech, the meanings of the three moods are distinguished not so much by the forms of the verbs, as by their distribution.

Cf. When I need a thing, I g o and b u y it.

We insist that he g о and buy it.

G о and b u y it.

§ 227. One of the most important differences between the indicative and the other moods is that the meaning of ‘tense’ does not go with the meanings of subjunctive mood and imperative mood. ‘Tense’ reflects the real time of a real action. The imperative and subjunctive moods represent the action not as real, but as desired or imagined, and the notions of real time are discarded.

§ 228. The meaning of ‘perfect order’ does not go with the meaning of imperative mood because one cannot require of anyone to fulfil an action preceding the request. But it is easy to imagine a preceding action. Therefore the system of the subjunctive mood includes opposemes of order.

Aspect and voice opposemes are characteristic of the systems of all moods, but the ‘passive’ and ‘continuous’ members of the opposemes are very rarely used in the imperative mood. There are person opposemes (though not systematically used) of only one type in the subjunctive mood system (should go – would go) and none in the imperative mood. The number opposeme was – were is sometimes realized in the subjunctive mood (colloquial). Opposemes of the category of posteriority (shall go – should go; will go – would go) are typical only of the indicative mood.

The system of opposemes of each mood can roughly be represented as follows:

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 2079