Dubitative mood (
abbreviated
An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
) is an
epistemic
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Episte ...
grammatical mood
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used for signaling modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying (for example, a statement of ...
found in some languages, that indicates that the statement is dubious,
doubt
Doubt is a mental state in which the mind remains suspended between two or more contradictory propositions, unable to be certain of any of them.
Doubt on an emotional level is indecision between belief and disbelief. It may involve uncertainty, ...
ful, or
uncertain. It may subsist as a separate morphological category, as in
Bulgarian
Bulgarian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Bulgaria
* Bulgarians, a South Slavic ethnic group
* Bulgarian language, a Slavic language
* Bulgarian alphabet
* A citizen of Bulgaria, see Demographics of Bulgaria
* Bul ...
, or else as a category of use of another form, as of the
conditional mood The conditional mood (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood used in conditional sentences to express a proposition whose validity is dependent on some condition, possibly counterfactual.
It may refer to a distinct verb form that expresses the condit ...
of
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
or
French: ''Il a été amené à l'hôpital'' "He was taken to hospital," ''Il aurait été amené à l'hôpital'' "He was apparently/He is said to have been/We believe he was/The information we have is that he was taken to hospital."
An example can be taken from
Ojibwe
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
, an
Algonquian language of North America. Verbs in Ojibwe can be marked with a dubitative suffix, indicating that the speaker is doubtful or uncertain about what they are saying. So ''aakozi'' means "he is sick", while ''aakozidog'' can be translated as something like "he must be sick; I guess he's sick; maybe he's sick; he might be sick."
References
Grammatical moods
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