7. The category of mood

Mood is the grammatical category of the verb reflecting the relation of the action denoted by the verb to reality from the speaker's point of view.

In the sentences He listens attentively; Listen attentively; You would have listened attentively if you had been interested, we deal with the same action of listening, but in the first sentence the speaker presents the action as the one taking place in reality, whereas in the second sentence the speaker urges the listener to perform the action, and in the third sentence the speaker presents the action as imaginary. These different relations of the action to reality are expressed by different mood-forms of the verb: listens, listen, would have listened. Similar examples can be found in Ukrainian (Сонце сходить. Зшди сонце! Якщо би сонце зшшло).

The meaning of the three moods is distinguished in the language structure not so much by the opposition of individual forms (as in the case in the opposemes of other categories), as by the opposition of the systems of forms each mood possesses. To illustrate this let us compare the synthetic forms of the lexeme "have " in the three moods:

Indicative Conditional Imperative

have, has, had have, had have

One of the most important differences between the indicative and other moods is that the meaning of "tense" does not go with the meanings of conditional and imperative mood. "Tense" reflects the real time of a real action. The imperative and conditional moods represent the action not as real, but as desired or imagined, and the notions of the real time are discarded.

According to B.S. Khaimovich and B.I. Rogovskaya [24; 141], the system of opposemes of each mood can roughly be represented as follows: Opposemes Moods

Indicative Conditional Imperative write - be writing (aspect) + + (+)

write — be written (voice) + + (+)

should write - would write (person) + + -

was - were (number) + (+) -

writes — wrote — will write (tense) + — —

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Thus, the category of mood reveals the relation of the denoted action (позначувана дгя) to reality. In both languages there are verb forms of the Indicative mood (дшсний), the Imperative mood (наказовий) and the Conditional mood (умовний).

7.1. The Indicative and Imperative moods

The Indicative mood is the basic mood of the verb. Morphologically it is the most developed system including all the categories of the verb. Semantically it is a fact mood. It serves to present an action as a fact of reality. It is the "most objective" or the "least subjective" of all the moods. It conveys minimum personal attitude to the fact. This becomes particularly obvious in such sentences as Water consists of oxygen and hydrogen where consists denotes an actual fact, and the speaker's attitude is neutral.

Forms of the indicative mood serve to denote the action or the state that correspond to the actual reality (вщповщають реальнш дшсносп).

All the forms of the Indicative mood in English and Ukrainian have already been considered by us previously, when we dwelled upon the categories of person, number, tense and state. The characteristic feature of the Indicative mood is its connection with the category of tense: it is expressed by the forms of the present, past and future tenses.

The imperative mood represents an action as a command, urging, or request to one's interlocutor. It is a direct expression of one's will. Therefore it is much more "subjective" than the indicative mood. Its modal meaning is very strong and distinct.

The imperative mood is morphologically the least developed of all moods. In fact, the grammeme write, know, search, do, etc. is the only one regularly met in speech. The "continuous" and "passive" opposites of this grammeme {be writing, be searhing, etc.; be known, be warned, etc.) are very rare.

Some linguists are of the opinion that Modern English possesses analytical forms of the imperative mood for the first and the third person are built up with the help of the semantically weakened unstressed let, as in Let him come, Let us go, etc. [24; 140-156].

Ukrainian verb forms of the imperative mood similar to English ones also render the order, wish, appeal, demand, request or some other types of inducement (спонукання) to perform some action.

In Ukrainian forms of the imperative mood are built from the base of the present tense:

a) for the second person singular with the ending -и {пиши, idu) or without endings {сядь, встань, читай);

b) for the first person plural with the ending 4мо (несгмо, xodijuo) or -mo {читаймо, станъмо);

c) for the second person plural by means of adding the endings - iTb (несть, idimb) or -те {читайте, станьте).

For the third person singular and plural forms of the imperative mood are built analytically by combining forms of the third person of the present or future tense of the indicative mood with the particle хай (нехай): Хай вт родить (зробитъ). Нехай вони прийдутъ (прихо­дить). Хай живе Украша!

Besides there is used the analytical form of the imperative mood for the first person singular and plural, which is created by combining of the corresponding form of the imperative mood давати (давай, давайте) and the corresponding personal form of the future tense of indicative mood of the conjugated verb: Давай я зроблю. Давайте зробимо. Давайте погдемо. Verbs of the imperfective aspect are used more rarely in such a form and only in the form of the infinitive:

давайте cnieamu.

In modern English language the system of forms of the imperative mood is much simpler than in Ukrainian. In relation to the second person singular and plural only one common form of the imperative mood is used. It coincides with the infinitive and differs from it only by the absence of the particle "to ". Not rendering the category of number this form is used at addressing to both one person and several persons: Go "Idu/Idimb ". Take "Шзъми/ШзъмЫъ ".

Order or request to the first and third persons singular and plural is expressed analytically with the help of the verb "let" and the infinitive of the notional verb. These two parts of the analytical form are usually separated by the corresponding personal pronoun in the objective case or the noun in the common case: Let me/us do it

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(Давайте я зроблю/зробимо). Let him/them/your brother come (Нехай вт/вони/ваш брат прийде/прийдутъ).

The peculiarity of the English imperative mood is its expressive or emphatic form used to denote the strengthened kind of request: Do come tomorrow! (Обов'язково приходъте завтра!).

In Ukrainian there are also widely used the so called intimate or unceremonious / unofficial forms of the imperative mood, which are created by adding particles of the intimate character to the common form of the imperative mood (штишзуюч1 частей) -но/-бо: idu-но сюди, скажи-но меш, скажи-бо швидше.

In Ukrainian there is also spread the use of the infinitive of the verb with the imperative meaning: Bcmamu! Most often such forms can be met in different slogans, newspaper headlines, military commands: Виконати план достроково! Шдготуватися до Почистити казарми! [5; 92-93].