Ancient Greek had a species of generic mood, the so-called gnomic utterance, marked by the aorist indicative (normally reserved for statements about the past). It was used especially to express philosophical truths about the world.
Indicative (evidential)
The indicative mood is used for factual statements and positive beliefs. All intentions that a particular language does not categorize as another mood are classified as indicative. In English, questions are considered indicative. It is the most commonly used mood and is found in all languages. Example: «Paul is reading a book» or «John reads books».
Negative
The negative mood expresses a negated action. In many languages, this is not a distinct mood; negation is expressed by adding a particle:
Before the verb phrase, as in Spanish No está en casa;
Or after it, as in archaic and dialectal English Thou remembrest not or Dutch Ik zie hem niet, or in modern English, I think not;
Or both, as in French Je ne sais pas or Afrikaans Hy kan nie Afrikaans praat nie.
Standard English usually adds the auxiliary verb do, and then adds not after it: «I did not go there». In these instances, «do» is known as a dummy auxiliary, because of its zero semantic content.
In Indo-European languages, it is not customary to speak of a negative mood, since in these languages negation is originally a grammatical particle that can be applied to a verb in any of these moods. Nevertheless, in some, like Welsh, verbs have special inflections to be used in negative clauses.
In other language families, the negative may count as a separate mood. An example is Japanese, which conjugates verbs in the negative after adding the suffix – nai (indicating negation), e.g. tabeta («ate») and tabenakatta («did not eat»).
It could be argued that Modern English has joined the ranks of these languages, since negation in the indicative mood requires the use of an auxiliary verb and a distinct syntax in most cases. Contrast, for instance, «He sings» → «He doesn't sing» (where the auxiliary to do has to be supplied, inflected to does, and the clitic form of not suffixed to derive the negative from «He sings») with Il chante → Il ne chante pas; French adds the (discontinuous) negative particle ne… pas, without changing the form of the verb.
Irrealis
Irrealis moods are the set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened as the speaker is talking.
Cohortative
The cohortative mood (alternatively, hortatory) 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.
Conditional
The conditional mood is used to speak of an event whose realization is dependent on a certain condition, particularly, but not exclusively, in conditional sentences. 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. Thus, the conditional version of «John eats if he is hungry» is:
John would eat if he were hungry, in English;
Jean mangerait s'il avait faim, in French;
Juan comería si tuviera hambre, in Spanish.
In the Romance languages, the conditional form is used primarily in the apodosis (main clause) of conditional clauses, and also in a few set phrases where it expresses courtesy or doubt. The main verb in the protasis (dependent clause) is either in the subjunctive or in the indicative mood.
This is not a universal trait; in Finnish, for example, the conditional mood is used both in the apodosis and the protasis. An example is the sentence «I would buy a house if I earned a lot of money», where in Finnish both clauses have the conditional marker – isi– : Ostaisin talon, jos ansaitsisin paljon rahaa.
In English, too, the would + infinitive construct can be employed in main clauses, with a subjunctive sense: «If you would only tell me what's troubling you, I might be able to help».
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. Other languages, such as Seri, 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»).
Interrogative
The interrogative mood is used for asking questions. Most languages do not have a special mood for asking questions, but Welsh and Nenets do.
Jussive
The jussive mood is similar to the cohortative mood, in that it expresses plea, insistence, imploring, self-encouragement, wish, desire, intent, command, purpose or consequence. In some languages, the two are distinguished in that cohortative occurs in the first person and the jussive in the second or third.
Sometimes this is called a «desiderative mood», since it indicates desires. Occasionally distinctions are made between different optative moods, e.g. a mood to express hopes as opposed to a mood to express desires. (Desires are what we want to be the case; hope generally implies an 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.)
Subjunctive
The subjunctive mood, sometimes called conjunctive mood, has several uses in dependent clauses. 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 native English speakers need not use it. Example: «I suggested that Paul read some books», Paul is not in fact reading a book. Contrast this with the sentence «Paul reads books», where the verb «to read» is in the present tense, indicative mood. Another way, especially in British English, of expressing this might be «I suggested that Paul should read some books», derived from «Paul should read some books.»
Other uses of the subjunctive in English, as in «And if he be not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his trespass…» (KJV Leviticus 5:7) have definitely become archaic. Statements such as «I will ensure that he leave immediately» often sound archaic or overly formal, and have been almost completely supplanted by constructions with the indicative, like «I will ensure that he leaves immediately».
The subjunctive mood figures prominently in the grammar of Persian and the Romance languages, 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).
2.5 The category of tense
Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time at which an event described by a sentence occurs. In English, this is a property of a verb form, and expresses only time-related information.
Tense, along with mood, voice and person, are four ways in which verb forms are frequently characterized, in languages where those categories apply. There are languages (mostly isolating languages, like Chinese) where tense is not expressed anywhere in the verb or any auxiliaries, but only as adverbs of time, when needed for comprehension; in the same condition, grammatical tense in certain languages can be expressed optionally (such as Vietnamese), for example, «sinh» meaning «birth» and «sanh» meaning «birthed»; and there are also languages (such as Russian) where verbs indicate aspect in addition to or instead of tense.
The exact number of tenses in a language is often a matter of some debate, since many languages include the state of certainty of the information, the frequency of the event, whether it is ongoing or finished, and even whether the information was directly experienced or gleaned from hearsay, as moods or tenses of a verb. Some grammarians consider these to be separate tenses, and some do not.
Tenses cannot be easily mapped from one language into another. While all languages have a «default» tense with a name usually translated as «present tense» (or «simple present»), the actual meaning of this tense may vary considerably.
English tenses
Viewed in the strictest linguistic sense, English has only two tenses: nonpast tense and past tense, which are shown with the verb endings – Ø and – ed.
The following chart shows how T/M/A (tense/modal/aspect) is expressed in English:
Tense Modal Aspect Verb
Perfect Progressive
– Ø (nonpast)
– ed (past) Ø (none)
will (future) Ø (none)
have – en (perfect) Ø (none)
be – ing (progressive) do
Since will is a modal auxiliary, it cannot co-occur with other modals like can, may, and must. Only aspects can be used in infinitives. Some linguists consider will a future marker and give English two more tenses, future tense and future-in-past tense, which are shown by will and would respectively. Also, in nonlinguistic language study, aspects and mode are viewed as tenses.
Tense, aspect, and mood
The distinction between grammatical tense, aspect, and mood is fuzzy and at times controversial. The English continuous temporal constructions express an aspect as well as a tense, and some therefore consider that aspect to be separate from tense in English. In Spanish the traditional verb tenses are also combinations of aspectual and temporal information.
Going even further, there's an ongoing dispute among modern English grammarians (see English grammar) regarding whether tense can only refer to inflected forms. In Germanic languages there are very few tenses (often only two) formed strictly by inflection, and one school contends that all complex or periphrastic time-formations are aspects rather than tenses.
The abbreviation TAM, T/A/M or TMA is sometimes found when dealing with verbal morphemes that combine tense, aspect and mood information.
In some languages, tense and other TAM information may be marked on a noun, rather than a verb. This is called nominal TAM.
Classification of tenses
Tenses can be broadly classified as:
Absolute: indicates time in relationship to the time of the utterance (i.e. «now»). For example, «I am sitting down», the tense is indicated in relation to the present moment.
Relative: in relationship to some other time, other than the time of utterance, e.g. «While strolling through the shops, she saw a nice dress in the window». Here, the «saw» is relative to the time of the «strolling». The relationship between the time of «strolling» and the time of utterance is not clearly specified.
Absolute-relative: indicates time in relationship to some other event, whose time in turn is relative to the time of utterance. (Thus, in absolute-relative tense, the time of the verb is indirectly related to the time of the utterance; in absolute tense, it is directly related; in relative tense, its relationship to the time of utterance is left unspecified.) For example, «When I walked through the park, I saw a bird.» Here, «saw» is present relative to the «walked», and «walked» is past relative to the time of the utterance, thus «saw» is in absolute-relative tense.
Moving on from this, tenses can be quite finely distinguished from one another, although no language will express simply all of these distinctions. As we will see, some of these tenses in fact involve elements of modality (e.g. predictive and not-yet tenses), but they are difficult to classify clearly as either tenses or moods.
Many languages define tense not just in terms of past/future/present, but also in terms of how far into the past or future they are. Thus they introduce concepts of closeness or remoteness, or tenses that are relevant to the measurement of time into days (hodiernal or hesternal tenses).
Some languages also distinguish not just between past, present, and future, but also nonpast, nonpresent, nonfuture. Each of these latter tenses incorporates two of the former, without specifying which.
Some tenses:
Absolute tenses
Future tenses. Some languages have different future tenses to indicate how far into the future we are talking about. Some of these include:
Close future tense: in the near future, soon
Hodiernal future tense: sometime today
Post-hodiernal future tense: sometime after today
Remote future tense: in the more distant future
Predictive future tense: a future tense which expresses a prediction rather than an intention, i.e. «I predict he will lose the election, although I want him to win». As such, it is really more of a mood than a tense. (Its tenseness rather than modality lies in the fact that you can predict the future, but not the past.)
Nonfuture tense: refers to either the present or the past, but does not clearly specify which. Contrasts with future.
Nonpast tense: refers to either the present or the future, but does not clearly specify which. Contrasts with past.
Not-yet tense: has not happened in present or past (nonfuture), but often with the implication that it is expected to happen in the future. (As such, is both a tense and a modality). In English, it is expressed with «not yet», hence its name.
Past tenses. Some languages have different past tenses to indicate how far into the past we are talking about.
Hesternal past tense: yesterday or early, but not remote
Hodiernal past tense: sometime earlier today
Immediate past tense: very recent past tense, e.g. in the last minute or two
Recent past tense: in the last few days/weeks/months (exact definition varies)
Remote past tense: more than a few days/weeks/months ago (exact definition varies)
Nonrecent past tense: not recent past tense, contrasting with recent past tense
Nonremote past tense: not remote past tense, contrasting with remote past tense
Prehesternal past tense: before hesternal past tense
Prehodiernal past tense: before hodiernal past tense
Preterit: past tense not marked for aspect or modality
Present tense
Still tense: indicates a situation held to be the case, at or immediately before the utterance
Absolute-relative tenses
future perfect tense: will have completed by some time in the future, will occur before some time in the future
Future-in-future tense: at some time in the future, will still be in the future
Future-in-past tense: at some time in the future, will be in the past
Future-perfect-in-past tense: will be completed by some time which is in the future of some time in the past, eg., Sally went to work; by the time she should be home, the burglary would have been completed.
Past perfect tense: at some time in the past, was already in the past
Relative tenses
Relative future tense: is in the future of some unspecified time
Relative nonfuture tense: is in the past or present of some unspecified time
Relative nonpast tense: is in the present or future of some unspecified time
Relative past tense: is in the past of some unspecified time
Relative present tense: is in the present of some unspecified time
2.6 Palmer’s and mind’s discussion on English modality
Historically in language descriptions, the grammatical terms «modality» and «mood» have lacked truly definitive categories of meaning. For that reason, linguistic dictionaries have often treated them as synonyms, cross referencing their entries and in some cases, describing how different theories or authors have used the terms.
In this book, Palmer treats «modality» as a valid cross-language grammatical category that, along with tense and aspect, is notionally concerned with the event or situation that is reported by an utterance. However, he says that unlike tense and aspect which are categories associated with the nature of the event itself, modality is concerned with the status of the proposition that describes the event.
Palmer then goes on to define two basic distinctions in how languages deal with the category of modality: modal systems and mood. He believes that many languages may be characterized by one or the other. He also claims that typology related to modality cannot be undertaken on purely formal grounds because of the complexity of cross-linguistic differences in the grammatical means used to express what he terms «notional» categories. This claim is substantiated by the great variety of forms and structures evident in the data from 122 languages that he uses to illustrate the expression of modality.