Potential mood
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In
linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
, irrealis moods (
abbreviated An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening, contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened form of a word, usually ended with a trailing per ...
) are the main set of
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 ...
s that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened at the moment the speaker is talking. This contrasts with the
realis mood A realis mood (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Most ...
s. They are used in statements without
truth value In logic and mathematics, a truth value, sometimes called a logical value, is a value indicating the relation of a proposition to truth, which in classical logic has only two possible values ('' true'' or '' false''). Truth values are used in ...
(imperative, interrogative, subordinate, etc) Every language has grammatical ways of expressing unreality. Linguists tend to reserve the term "irrealis" for particular morphological markers or clause types. Many languages with irrealis mood make further subdivisions between kinds of irrealis moods. This is especially so among
Algonquian languages The Algonquian languages ( ; also Algonkian) are a family of Indigenous languages of the Americas and most of the languages in the Algic language family are included in the group. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from ...
such as Blackfoot.


List of irrealis moods


Moods


Subjunctive

The subjunctive mood, sometimes called conjunctive mood, has several uses in
dependent clause A dependent clause, also known as a subordinate clause, subclause or embedded clause, is a certain type of clause that juxtaposes an independent clause within a complex sentence. For instance, in the sentence "I know Bette is a dolphin", the claus ...
s. Examples include discussing hypothetical or unlikely events, expressing opinions or emotions, or making polite requests (the exact scope is language-specific). A subjunctive mood exists in English, but it often is not obligatory. Example: "I suggested that Paul an apple", Paul is not in fact eating an apple. Contrast this with the sentence "Paul an apple", where the verb "to eat" is in the present tense,
indicative mood A realis mood ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Mo ...
. Another way, especially in
British English British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to ...
, of expressing this might be "I suggested that Paul an apple", derived from "Paul should eat an apple." Other uses of the subjunctive in English, as in "And not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his trespass..." (
KJV The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by ...
Leviticus 5:7), have become archaic or formal. Statements such as "I shall ensure that immediately" often are formal, and often have been supplanted by constructions with the indicative, such as "I'll make sure
hat A hat is a Headgear, head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorpor ...
immediately". (In other situations, the verb form for subjunctive and indicative may be identical: "I'll make sure
hat A hat is a Headgear, head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorpor ...
immediately.) The subjunctive mood figures prominently in the
grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...
of the
Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...
, which require this mood for certain types of dependent clauses. This point commonly causes difficulty for English speakers learning these languages. In certain other languages, the dubitative or the conditional moods may be employed instead of the subjunctive in referring to doubtful or unlikely events (see the main article).


Conditional

The conditional mood (
abbreviated An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening, contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened form of a word, usually ended with a trailing per ...
) is used to speak of an event whose realization is dependent upon another condition, particularly, but not exclusively, in
conditional sentence A conditional sentence is a sentence in a natural language that expresses that one thing is contingent on another, e.g., "If it rains, the picnic will be cancelled." They are so called because the impact of the sentence’s main clause is ''con ...
s. In Modern English, it is a periphrastic construction, with the form ''would'' + infinitive, e.g., ''I would buy''. In other languages, such as Spanish or French, verbs have a specific conditional
inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...
. This applies also to some verbs in German, in which the conditional mood is conventionally called , differing from . Thus, the conditional version of "John eats if he is hungry" is: : English: ''John would eat if he were hungry'' : :: or: : : : : : : : Norwegian : Norwegian : : : : In the
Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...
, the conditional form is used primarily in the apodosis (main clause) of conditional clauses, and in a few
set phrase A phraseme, also called a set phrase, fixed expression, multiword expression (in computational linguistics), or idiom, is a multi-word or multi-morphemic utterance whose components include at least one that is selectionally constrained or restrict ...
s where it expresses courtesy or doubt. The main verb in the
protasis In drama, a protasis is the introductory part of a play, usually its first act. The term was coined by the fourth-century Roman grammarian Aelius Donatus. He defined a play as being made up of three separate parts, the other two being epitasis an ...
(dependent clause) is either in the subjunctive or in the indicative mood. However, this is not a universal trait: among others, in German (as above) and in Finnish the conditional mood is used in both the apodosis and the protasis. A further example of Finnish conditional is the sentence "I would buy a house if I earned a lot of money", where in Finnish both clauses have the conditional marker : , just like in Hungarian, which uses the marker : . In Polish, the conditional marker also appears twice: . Because English is used as a lingua franca, a similar kind of doubling of the word 'would' is a fairly common way to misuse an English language construction. In French, while the standard language requires the indicative in the dependent clause, using the conditional mood in both clauses is frequently used by some speakers: ("If would have known, I wouldn't have come") instead of ("If I had known, I wouldn't have come"). This usage is heavily stigmatized ("les Si n'aiment pas les Ré !"). However, is more accepted, as a colloquial form. In the literary language, past unreal conditional sentences as above may take the pluperfect subjunctive in one clause or both, so that the following sentences are all valid and have the same meaning as the preceding example: ; ; .


Optative

The optative mood expresses hopes, wishes or commands. Other uses may overlap with the subjunctive mood. Few languages have an optative as a distinct mood; some that do are Albanian,
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
,
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
, Finnish,
Avestan Avestan ( ) is the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism. It belongs to the Iranian languages, Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family and was First language, originally spoken during the Avestan period, Old ...
(it was also present in
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...
, the ancestor of the aforementioned languages except for Finnish). In Finnish, the mood may be called an "archaic" or "formal imperative", even if it has other uses; nevertheless, it at least expresses formality. For example, the ninth Article of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal D ...
begins with: where "shall not be arrested" is the imperative of "is not arrested". Also, using the conditional mood in conjunction with the clitic yields an optative meaning: "if only I were". Here, it is evident that the wish has not been fulfilled and probably will not be. In Sanskrit, the optative is formed by adding the secondary endings to the verb stem. The optative, as other moods, is found in active voice and middle voice. Examples: "may you bear" (active) and "may you bear or yourself (middle). The optative may not only express wishes, requests and commands, but also possibilities, e.g., "he might perhaps wake up due to the bellowing of cows", doubt and uncertainty, e.g., "how would I be able to recognize Nala?" The optative may further be used instead of a
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 ...
.


Jussive

The jussive mood (
abbreviated An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening, contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened form of a word, usually ended with a trailing per ...
) expresses plea, insistence, imploring, self-encouragement, wish, desire, intent, command, purpose or consequence. In some languages, this is distinguished from the cohortative mood in that the cohortative occurs in the first person and the jussive in the second or third. It is found in
Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
, where it is called the (), and also in
Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
and in the constructed language
Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...
. The rules governing the jussive in Arabic are somewhat complex.


Potential

The potential mood (
abbreviated An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening, contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened form of a word, usually ended with a trailing per ...
) is a mood of probability indicating that, in the opinion of the speaker, the action or occurrence is considered likely. It is used in many languages, including in Finnish, Japanese, and
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
(including its ancestor
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...
), and in the
Sami languages Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ...
. (In Japanese it is often called something like tentative, since potential is used to refer to a
voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound produ ...
indicating capability to perform the action.) In Finnish, it is mostly a literary device, as it has virtually disappeared from daily spoken language in most dialects. Its suffix is , as in *''men'' + ''ne'' + ''e'' → "(s/he/it) will probably go". Some kinds of consonant clusters simplify to geminates. In spoken language, the word "probably" is used instead, e.g., "he probably comes", instead of .


Imperative

The imperative mood expresses direct commands, requests, and prohibitions. In many circumstances, using the imperative mood may sound blunt or even rude, so it is often used with care. Example: "Paul, do your homework now". An imperative is used to tell someone to do something without argument. Many languages, including English, use the bare verb stem to form the imperative (such as "go", "run", "do"). Other languages, such as Seri and
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
, however, use special imperative forms. In English, second person is implied by the imperative except when first-person plural is specified, as in "Let's go" ("Let us go"). The prohibitive mood, the negative imperative may be grammatically or morphologically different from the imperative mood in some languages. It indicates that the action of the verb is not permitted, e.g., "Do not go!" (archaically, "Go not!"). In Portuguese and Spanish, for example, the forms of the imperative are only used for the imperative itself, e.g., "" "" ("leave!"), whereas the subjunctive is used to form negative commands, e.g., "" "" ("don't leave!"). In English, the imperative is sometimes used to form a
conditional sentence A conditional sentence is a sentence in a natural language that expresses that one thing is contingent on another, e.g., "If it rains, the picnic will be cancelled." They are so called because the impact of the sentence’s main clause is ''con ...
: e.g., "Go eastward a mile, and you will see it" means "If you go eastward a mile, you will see it".


Desiderative

Whereas the optative expresses hopes, the desiderative mood expresses wishes and desires. Desires are what we want to be the case; hope generally implies optimism toward the chances of a desire's fulfillment. If someone desires something but is pessimistic about its chances of occurring, then one desires it but does not hope for it. Few languages have a distinct desiderative mood; three that do are
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
, Japanese, and
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...
. In Japanese the verb inflection expresses the speaker's desire, e.g., "I want to go there". This form is treated as a pseudo-adjective: the auxiliary verb is used by dropping the end of an adjective to indicate the outward appearance of another's mental state, in this case the desire of a person other than the speaker (e.g. "John appears to want to eat"). In Sanskrit, the infix , sometimes , is added to the reduplicated root, e.g. "he wants to live" instead of "he lives". The desiderative in Sanskrit may also be used as imminent: "he is about to die". The Sanskrit desiderative continues Proto-Indo-European .


Dubitative

The dubitative mood is used in
Ojibwe The Ojibwe (; Ojibwe writing systems#Ojibwe syllabics, syll.: ᐅᒋᐺ; plural: ''Ojibweg'' ᐅᒋᐺᒃ) are an Anishinaabe people whose homeland (''Ojibwewaki'' ᐅᒋᐺᐘᑭ) covers much of the Great Lakes region and the Great Plains, n ...
, Turkish, Bulgarian and other languages. It expresses the speaker's doubt or uncertainty about the event denoted by the verb. For example, in Ojibwe, translates as "he is in Baawitigong today." When the dubitative suffix is added, this becomes , "I guess he must be in Baawitigong."


Presumptive

The presumptive mood is used in Romanian and
Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...
to express presupposition or hypothesis, regardless of the fact denoted by the verb, as well as other more or less similar attitudes: doubt, curiosity, concern, condition, indifference, inevitability. Often, for a sentence in presumptive mood, no exact translation can be constructed in English which conveys the same nuance. The Romanian sentence, "he must have gone there" shows the basic presupposition use, while the following excerpt from a poem by Eminescu shows the use both in a conditional clause "suppose it is" and in a main clause showing an attitude of submission to fate "we would bear". : : :Be it one, be it the other... Whatever fate we have, :We will gladly go through all, be it peace or be it war In
Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...
, the presumptive mood can be used in all the three tenses. The same structure for a particular
grammatical aspect In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how a verbal action, event, or state, extends over time. For instance, perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference t ...
can be used to refer to the present, past and future times depending on the context. The table below shows the conjugations for the presumptive mood copula in Hindi and Romanian with some exemplar usage on the right: Note: # The translations are just the closest possible English approximations and not exact. # Only masculine conjugations are shown for Hindi.


Hortative

The hortative or hortatory mood is used to express plea, insistence, imploring, self-encouragement, wish, desire, intent, command, purpose or consequence. It does not exist in English, but phrases such as "let us" are often used to denote it. In Latin, it is interchangeable with the jussive.


Inferential

The inferential mood (
abbreviated An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening, contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened form of a word, usually ended with a trailing per ...
or ) is used to report a nonwitnessed event without confirming it, but the same forms also function as admiratives in the
Balkan The Balkans ( , ), corresponding partially with the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throug ...
languages in which they occur. The inferential mood is used in some languages such as Turkish to convey information about events that were not directly observed or were inferred by the speaker. When referring to Bulgarian and other Balkan languages, it is often called renarrative mood; when referring to
Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also

...
, it is called oblique mood. The inferential is usually impossible to distinguish when translated into English. For instance, indicative Bulgarian () and Turkish translates the same as inferential () and — with the English indicative ''he went''.For a more precise rendering, it would be possible to also translate these as "he reportedly went" or "he is said to have gone" (or even "apparently, he went") although, clearly, these long constructions would be impractical in an entire text composed in this tense. Using the first pair, however, implies very strongly that the speaker either witnessed the event or is very sure that it took place. The second pair implies either that the speaker did not in fact witness it taking place, that it occurred in the remote past, or that there is considerable doubt as to whether it actually happened. If it were necessary to make the distinction, then the English constructions "he must have gone" or "he is said to have gone" would partly translate the inferential.


References


Sources

*


External links


Greek moods

Mood and modality: Out of theory and into the fray
{{Authority control Grammatical moods