User talk:Ken H/Grammatical modality rev

Note: Because I seem to be generating some confusion at 'Mood'_talk. I have put up this test disambiguation page. If anyone posts 'disconfirmations' from any source, or examples that negate this 'npov', this page will be taken down and begun again, if possible. If you are tentative about your assertions, please feel free to post anything relevant in the talk page to help in fine-tuning this page. Simplifying this page is a desirable goal, as contra the current state where grammatical mood is sub-listed under grammatical modality leads to problems in distinguishing the concepts, which ramify not only into the types of mood and modality but also to the categories case, tense, aspect and some others. However, this revision page has now grown too long. The "npov" kite here is that grammatical moood is more grammar-oriented, while grammatical modality tends to philosophical, logical and semantic understandings. This issue certainly involves controversies that no single person will likely be able to solve alone. Please help. Ken H

Introduction
In general, modality refers to an abstract concept, whereas moods are the ways in which the concept is marked by individual languages. Many languages mark modalities with particular word endings or inflections, but also use other means for evoking additional modalities (e.g. using phrases, adverbs, etc.). Individual languages and language families differ in what distinctions they use to form their moods. No language will provide markings for all the moods below, although they are all expressible in any language using sufficient phrasing.

When learning a new language, its grammar must be acquired, through memorization or by ingraining new habits. Learning the grammar involves acquisition of the language's inflections and their positions in the sentence. Inflections may mark the language's verbs or its non-verbs (its determiners, adjectives, adverbs and nouns). Grammatical modality may refer either to the more complete frames of the language's many verbal modalities and some of its case relations, or, to its specifically inflectionally-marked grammatical moods.

Understanding grammatical modality within any specific language can become technical rather quickly, as it is tied to philosophical and cognitive/ethological understandings of semantically-oriented performances within that language. The language's grammatical moods can be seen as more practical (and inflection-oriented), but they are also very readily mixed up with its grammatical modalities. Because of the number of issues involved, some quite strange ideas about modality can result, and not to wax poetic, selective visions from the amorphous sea of categories can lead to some extraordinary and unsupportable claims.

Distinguishing mood and modality
Grammatical mood and modality are both important in order to properly realize the role of a given sentence within human relations and intents. The subject attracts some enthusiasm since it readily tends to reveal higher order relationships with respect to human activity. The more universal category of grammatical modality is addressed on this page. However, one may wish to branch off to look at specific issues about English mood. It may be that the previous link properly exists at the the English wikidict (?), then mirrored here within wikipedia. Grammatical modality or mood might also called verb modality or mood, since they mostly prevail on the verb (the bearers of tense and aspect which provide a metaphorical canvas for the representation of language action), but narrowing the discussion to verbs alone poses difficulties.

If these notions seem confusing, this page will look first at related categories in English to provide a supporting framework. Then the reader may wish to split off to pursue grammatical mood where English categories and words will illustrate some examplars from English and other languages. Further expansion of these ideas can also be found within descriptions of individual languages or their grammars within their own (wiki?)dictionary, if it exists yet. (?). Otherwise, those wanting information about the categories of grammatical modality may peruse this page through the end. Any moods presented for another language will also have at least a brief entry on this page.

Supporting ideas
  (The sections below may benefit by using Venn diagrams and modest graphics instead of the given bracketed text forms.)

Within English, the overarching relationship [ modality [ tense [ aspect]]] holds, but this is not true for all languages. Another language may reverse tense and aspect into [ modality [ aspect [ tense]]], and thus be aspect- rather than tense-dominated. These square brackets denote a hierarchical relationship that describes these roles with respect to sentences that is, the fundamental language form that usually exhibits both a subject and a predicate. Either one of the sentence's subject or predicate can also be implied but not explicitly stated.

Every sentence is in some mood or modality
The character of sentences (i.e., subjects and their predications) complicate this matter further due to their internal hierarchy or syntax. [ subject [ predicate ]]  or   [[ subject ] predicate ] sometimes then reflected in the languages' ordering of the predicate's structure, as in [ subject verb object ] versus [ subject object verb ] (e.g., [SOV]), or [VSO] and [VOS], or even [OSV] and [OVS]. These can be very important differences that are necessary for really understanding the grammar of the particular language, as they relate to notions of case and agency, or who is doing the action, or who the action is being done to, etc.

Tense and aspect are kin to, and act in concert with modalities
  Many of the moods are not written yet or loop shallowly from grammatical modality back to grammatical mood.

Because of expressive economy and efficiencies, tense and aspect often shadow or do the work of some grammatical modalities and thus these can be embedded into particular forms that may seem seem to hide otherwise obvious modal phenomena. For instance, the present progressive form of GO, as in "Jimmy Wales is going to his office" can also mean the future, the volitive, the obligative, or so forth, in addition to its plain present tense interpretation, All these are depend upon the sentence's context.

Modal auxiliary verbs serve major functions
Below find the outline of the more philosophical set of technical terms that describe grammatical modality. Some of these categories (types/labels) will also co-exist within grammatical mood, including many that are not obviously present in English, but are of interest as revealing facts about other languages. Unfortunately, it is left as a task for readers to discover what is applicable to their own particular languages.

A simple beginning for the English version of this task can start with looking at the entry for modal auxiliary verbs. Each of these can serve in several, or more, grammatical modalities and moods, while using the same auxiliary verb form. The sentence "Jimmy Wales can work at his office" may be in one of several moods (epistemic, potential or permissive, etc.). Working to understand these varying situations can be time-consuming (as well as challenging and rewarding for some people).

... existing material ...
  Existing page contents for grammatical modality follow.

  Problem: There may not be any way for many users to avoid switching to and fro between this page and grammatical mood.

  Known kinds of grammatical modality may be clustered into some overarching groups following the lead of prominent grammarians and philosophers of language.
 * 1) Deontic moods include the commissive, directive and volitive moods.
 * 2) Etc. using existing material in grammatical modality.
 * 3) Some slightly incoherent suggestions for this intro area to the "lists" can be found in MoodTalk.

  Literature searches will yield more grouping frameworks to head the canonical lists. Perhaps these can be done up neatly into light elegant figures. Ken Hughes 19:03:29, 2005-08-03 (UTC)