Talk:Grammatical mood

Energetic mood
the arabic word "Ya-ktub-un" does not mean "he certainly writes" but "They are writing" so i think the whole paragraph is misleading. i would find a better example...


 * Perhaps lā taghurannaka l-maḍhāhir! 'don't let appearances deceive you!' might do. Kanjuzi (talk) 19:15, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Which are the moods of English language?
It would be essential to get an answer in this article. But I cannot find it. (The answer is maybe Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative but according to another opinion Conditional is also a mood in English. Is it?) (you are - you were - be - you would be) --Szipucsu (talk) 22:01, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Anyway I think the article is too theoretical. What about writing some words about the moods of English language with examples and the moods of other Germanic languages? Then some words about other Indo-European languages (and eventually some other languages). --Szipucsu (talk) 22:08, 7 March 2010 (UTC)


 * From a linguistics perspective, a mood is a type of inflectional verb form, so the English "would go" is not a mood; it is a way of expressing one type of modality, which is a broader concept that allows either syntactic or inflectional constructions. On the other hand, from a traditional grammar perspective, it is a mood.


 * So the moods in English, linguistically speaking, are the indicative, imperative, and subjunctive. For a longer list of English moods from a traditional grammar perspective, see English conjugation tables. Duoduoduo (talk) 17:23, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
 * However, the whole article on English conjugation tables was deleted on June 1, 2011, so you haven't done anyone any good with this paragraph! People absolutely must check into RED wikilinks to find out why, and here it is December 29, 2012, 1.5 years later, and nobody had done so before me. RED wikilinks are poisonous snakes. 98.67.166.78 (talk) 04:19, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

The Progresive Mood
Some people might want to call it by a different name, but in high school in the United States, and earlier, I studied the progressive mood. This one uses the present tense of the verb "to be" plus the present participle of the main verb. Here are some examples of the use of the present progressive mood: "Manfred is driving his big black Mercedes to Brussels right now." "I am riding the train to work on time right now for a change." "Heidi is buying a hamburger now for that big, shaggy dog that she saw outside the front door of McDonald's." English has a progressive mood and it is used often and correctly by native speakers of the language, but many other languages such as Modern High German do not have a progressive mood. The same idea is expressed by a present tense or past tense verb combined with one or two adverbs. In English, there are the present progressive mood, the past progressive mood, and the future progressive mood, and there are also perfect tense moods. Unfortunately, many foreigners who have studied English in schools misuse the present progressive mood but using it when the present indicative mood is what they really need. It sounds strange. 98.67.166.78 (talk) 04:02, 30 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The examples you gave are not moods but aspects. See . (CaptainTickles (talk) 05:29, 28 January 2013 (UTC))

Vacuous Mood, Generic Bastard Clause... ?
I am in no sense a linguist, so could be my ignorance, but I drew confusion when trying to see what terms best (parsimoniously) describe a particular occurrence in English. Namely, the use of a progressive-aspect predicate or verbal noun on its own, stating no subject or mood: 'Making the most of your holiday'. Long used for slogans, titles and other places where it need no be a sentence, but there's a growing habit among younger people in the Anglo-sphere (and more so, -web) to mimic this as a sentence form for describing a thing done, liked or witnessed - often with intentional ambiguity.

For example, vapid captioned pictures plague the web with "When boys wear hats", and "Drinking a nice warm cup of tea" is the immediate way to mean 'I am approvingly drinking a nice warm cup of tea, and attention-whore-ing-ly beckon the thoughts of others on me or themselves doing so.'

A 'sentence' with no subject, tense or mood. There are many ways to term it indirectly, but it gets a bit untidy, and nothing in the articles I've read quite seems to pin it down. It strikes me as best summarised in terms of (lacking) mood. I've no wish to recognise the style as sound English, but I assume the academic would have or seek a succinct description of it. Can anyone shed light? Is it mentioned in any reputable works? Should this or another article allude to it?

Abh88 (talk) 14:16, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: If nobody else offers input here, you should take your question to Reference desk/Language, which is set-up for this kind of thing. –Quiddity (talk) 19:30, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Simplification
The opening section seemed to me too complex - hitting the reader with too many technical terms at once - so I have simplified it slightly. Kanjuzi (talk) 19:18, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

French subjunctive
The example is incorrect since "avait" is indicative. Theoretically, we could replace it with the imperfect subjunctive, but it would sound archaic. --147.142.185.205 (talk) 13:23, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Hebrew optative?
A contributor has added Biblical Hebrew to the list of languages that has an optative mood. I have undone that addition. According to the WP article, Biblical Hebrew has cohortative, imperative, and jussive moods, but there is no mention of optative. If optative is a mood in Hebrew, some reference to a standard grammar is needed, since this does not seem to be the generally established view. Kanjuzi (talk) 05:30, 8 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Jussive is the terminology used by Semitists and Hebraists; its primary functions are wishes (prototypical optative) and 3rd person directive (common cooptation of optatives).--178.203.147.251 (talk) 13:57, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Moods
"Infinitives, gerunds, and participles, which are non-finite forms of the verb, are not considered to be examples of moods."
 * Historically seen, this is not correct. In traditional grammar, the infinitive (infinitive mode, infinitive mood) is a mood. And contemporary, there might be different views. For example, the Icelandic term for "participle", "lýsingarháttur", literally means "description mood". The name implies that is regarded as a mood.

"English has indicative, imperative, emphatic, and subjunctive moods"
 * "emphatic" as an English mood? Depending on the source, the English moods usually are either infinitive, indicative, imperative and subjunctive, or just indicative, imperative and subjunctive.

-Amejne (talk) 20:52, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

I've removed emphatic. Honestly not sure why it was on there for so long; if we were to count it, we would also have to count all the other auxiliary verbs as moods. Plus, there were no sources about it, and I couldn't find anything reputable by searching it. Dayshade (talk) 05:51, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Different concepts, terminological confusion, history and some responses to previous comments Hebrew and emphatics
The article is, as rated, indeed in need of much expansion and clarification. I hope the following will be helpful suggestions.

I highly recommend the introductory article of this volume as a place to start to remedy these issues:

https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199591435.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199591435

[I apologise for not carrying out the tast myself. ]

1. The article, at least as defined by its introduction, does treat of different notion(s) of mood/modality as conceptualized by scholars diverging from Palmer and Bybee (&c.) (i.e. mood as manifestation of modality, attitude, realis/irrealis etc.).

While this ~school is part of the mainstream and certainly influential, there are many different and important conceptualizations to consider.

There are scholars that consider modality a supercategory, rather than grammatical category equivalent to tense/aspect proper. Others consider it epiphenomenal and I imagine there are some that do not see grounds for a unified category covering these different semantic functions in the first place.

The following issues stem from reading previous entries in the talk page rather a close reading of the article itself.

2. Some responses concerned the applicabilty of the term to periphrastic constructions vs. its limitation to inflection proper. This either means that the definition of mood as the inflectional manifestation of modality needs to be better defined or that the issue of periphrastic manifestation of inflection-equivalent itself needs some clarification. On this, I would also note, again, that this entire line of thought is one among others.

The overlap/synonymity of optative/jussive indicates lack of cohesion.

The sections on the subjunctive, and probably also on the conditional, should be expanded with reference to discussion of their validity as moods in the sense of manifestation of midality. Being more syntactic in nature, their consideration in discussion of modality is highly controversial. There is extensive literature esp. on the subjunctive in the article by Mauri/Sanso in the volume linked.

3. The responders' confusion of different notions of mood as (e.g. as simply the paradigm of different verbal forms), use of the term 'mode', highlight the need for a section on the history of the terminology and concepts. The relevant article on this history in the volume above is a very useful summary.

A history would be even more useful toward an article more inclusive of the available scholarship.

4. Jussive is the common name of the Hebrew (and other West Semitic) form(s) of the prefix conjugation expressing wishes and commands (though there is an imperative= 2nd person directive). The form is used in other contexts and the history is a bit too complex to explain here. The point is, though, that, unless one defines 'jussive' as '3rd person directive', there is not reason why the form should not be called optative, especially for those not specialized in semitology.

I should note that the common term for the cognate Akkadian form among assyriologists is 'precative'. Again, it may well, if not preferrably be termed 'optative' here.

5. The inclusion of emphatics (energic/energetic may also be considered a synonym, at least going by semitology) is quesitoned above. However, they are/can be 'modal' according to Palmer and are considered 'moods' among semitists.

For those interested, though I cannot explain it thoroughly or aptly: They can be analysed as modal (wherein non-factuality is a key element) in their being responses to doubt or negation of what they state (counterfact-ing a counterfactual?). Furthermore, they are certainly related to 'the speaker's attitude toward what they are saying'.

This having been said, the status of emphatics as 'modal' is indeed questionable on grounds that their function is that of discourse rather than modality per se (This is considered in Palmer too, where it is posited the categories are not mutually exclusive). This is similar to the problem in treating subjunctives and conditional where the key function codified is syntactic rather than semantic (>modal). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.203.147.7 (talk) 20:26, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Move “Moods in Oceanic languages” section
Move the “Moods in Oceanic languages” section to their respective articles. The rest of the page is focusing on the different moods, and using certain languages as examples. This section focuses just on the three languages, not the moods themselves. This section would be better suit if moved to each respective language’s main article, and removed from this article. ThunderxBolt (talk) 22:49, 21 November 2022 (UTC)