Category of Mood
The meaning of this category is the attitude of the speaker or writer towards the content of the sentence, whether the speaker considers the action real, unreal, desirable, necessary, etc. It is expressed in the form of the verb.
There are three moods in English – the indicative mood, the imperative mood and the oblique mood (Fig. 66).
The indicative mood form shows that what is said must be regarded as a fact, as something which has occurred or is occurring at the moment of speaking or will occur in the future. It may denote actions with different time-reference and different aspective characteristics. Therefore the indicative mood has a wide variety of tense and aspect forms in the active and passive voice.
The imperative mood expresses a command or a request to perform an action addressed to somebody, but not the action itself. As it does not actually denote an action as a real act, it has no tense category. The unfulfilled action always refers to the future. Aspect distinctions and voice distinctions are not characteristic of the imperative mood, although forms such as, be writing, be warned sometimes occur. This form is always addressed to the second person.
The oblique mood expresses non-facts: unreal or hypothetical actions or states. A hypothetical action or state may be viewed upon as desired, necessary, possible, supposed, imaginary, or contradicting reality.
In Old English the oblique mood was expressed by a special system of forms with a special set of inflections, different from those of the indicative. In the course of time most of the inflections were lost, and the difference between the forms of the oblique nd those of the indicative has almost disappeared. In Modern English there remain only two synthetic forms of the old regular system of the subjunctive, which differ from the forms of the indicative.
Subjunctive I coincides with the plain verb stem for all persons in both the singular and the plural. It denotes a hypothetical action referring to the present or future. Of these surviving forms only be is always distinct from the indicative forms and is therefore rather current.
Subjunctive II refers the hypothetical action to the present, future or past and shows that it contradicts reality. The non-factual past indefinite and past continuous are used to denote hypothetical actions in the present or future. The non-factual past perfect and past perfect continuous denote hypothetical actions in the past.
Most of the later formations are analytical, built by means of the auxiliaries which developed from the modal verbs should and would, plus any form of the infinitive.
According to their use and function analytic oblique forms may be divided into two groups.
Fig. 66
The Conditional Mood is formed by means of would + infinitive for all persons, both singular and plural. This form denotes an unreal action the unreality of which is due to the absence of necessary conditions. It may be used both in simple and complex sentences.
The Suppositional Mood is formed by means of should+ infinitive for all persons, both singular and plural. This mood represents the action as problematic, but not contradicting reality. This form expresses necessity, suggestion, advice, supposition.
NON-FINITE FORMS OF THE VERB
Verbals are the forms of the verb intermediary in many of their lexico-grammatical features between the verb and the non-processual parts of speech. Thus, these forms possess some verbal and some non-verbal features.The non-finite forms are four in number, they are: the infinitive, the gerund, participle I and participle II.
The mixed features of these forms are revealed in the principal spheres of the part-of-speech characterisation, i.e. in their meaning, structural marking, combinability, and syntactic functions.
Lexically non-finites do not differ from finite forms. Grammatically the difference between the two types of forms lies in the fact that non-finites may denote a secondary action or a process related to that expressed by the finite verb.
Non-finites possess the verb categories of voice, perfect, and aspect. They lack the categories of person, number, mood, and tense.
None of the forms have morphological features of non-verbal parts of speech, neither nominal, adjectival or adverbial. In the sphere of syntax, however, non-finites possess both verbal and non-verbal features. Their non-verbal character reveals itself in their syntactical functions.
Syntactically the verbal character of non-finites is manifested mainly in their combinability. Similarly to finite forms they may combine with nouns functioning as direct, indirect, or prepositional objects, with adverbs and prepositional phrases used as adverbial modifiers, and with subordinate clauses.
All non-finite verb forms may participate in the so-called predicative constructions, that is, two-component syntactical units where a noun or a pronoun and a non-finite verb form are in predicative relations similar to those of the subiect and the predicate.