The Category of Mood

The category of mood (modus (lat.) – характер, модус) expresses the character of connection between the process denoted by the verb and the actual reality either presenting the process as affect that happened, happens or will happen or treating it as an imaginary phenomenon. The general meaning of the category is the degree of the reality of the action. The functional opposition underlining this category is expressed in oblique mood meaning contrasted against the forms of direct mood meaning.

The Indefinite Mood is the only real mood in the English language. It represents an action as a real fact. The forms of the indefinite Mood are the tense-aspect forms of the verb.

The two non-fact (oblique) Moods in English are the Imperative Mood and the Subjunctive Mood.

The Subjunctive Mood represents an action as unreal expressing two degrees of reality: not quite real (Present, Future), quite unreal (for the Past).

Subjunctive signifies different attitude towards the process denoted by the verb, namely desire, suppositional, recommendation, and suggestion.

There are modal spective (subjunctive) mood forms:

1) the combination with may, might is used to express wish or desire, hope: May success attend you!

2) the combination should + infinitive is used in a various subordinate predicative units to express supposition, speculation, suggestion and recommendation: What ever they should say of the project that must be considered seriously.

3) the combination let + objective subjunctive + infinitive is used to express an appeal to commit an action in relation to all the persons: Let’s go back.

The subjunctive, the integral mood of unreality, presents the two sets of forms according to the structural division of verbal tenses into the present and the past: “I suggest that he should continue”. These form sets constitute the two corresponding functional systems of the subjunctive:

- the spective, the mood of attitudes;

- the conditional.

Each of these in its turn falls into two systemic subsets, so that we have 4 subjunctive form-types. And these types can be called respectively:

- subj. 1-perspective;

- subj. 2 -stipulative;

- subj. 3-contractive;

- subj. 4 modal spective.

M.A. Ganshina and N.M. Vasilevska in their turn present the system of Subjunctive Mood in the following way:

The Synthetical Moods	The Analytical Moods
Subjunctive I	Subjunctive II	The Suppositional Moods	The Conditional Moods
Simple Sentence	Complex Sentence	Present Subjunctive II (Non-Perfect Subjunctive II)	Past Subjunctive II (Perfect Subjunctive 11)	Present Sup-positional (Non-Perfect Sup-positional)	Past Sup-positional (Perfect Sup-positional)	Present Condi-tional (Non-Perfect Condi-tional)	Past Condi-tional (Perfect Condi-tional)
Be it so! Success attend you! Be happy! Long live our Motherland!	I insist that he be at home. It is desirable that she be ready by that time. We suggest that the tax be abolished.	I wish I were young. You look as if you knew everything. It is high time we went home. Oh, that the storm were over!	I wish 1 had been at home at that time. You looked as if you had known everything.	I insist he should be at home. It is necessary that they should do the work. She fears lest she should be late. Wherever you should go you have no right to do it.	At last they grew terrified that some evil should have befallen him. Maggie was frightened lest she should have been doing something wrong.	If I knew about her arrival I should meet her. If he were here he would help us.	If I had known about her arrival I should have met her. If he had been here he would have helped us.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 919

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