Курсовая работа: The category of Mood

4. The name conditional hardly fits, seeing that the forms with should–would are as a rule not used in conditional clauses. They are mostly used in principal clauses or simple sentences, which distinguishes their distribution from that of forms without should – would used almost exclusively in subordinate clauses.

E. g. After all, if he lost it would not be he who paid. (Galsworthy).

Under normal conditions Winifred would merely have locked the door. (lb).

The difference between the two sets of opposemes

had written (order)

wrote were written (voice)

were writing (aspect)

should have written (order)

should write should be written (voice)

should be writing (aspect)

would write (person, irregular)

Is thus a matter of usage. That does not exclude, of course, «the possibility of a language category with speech significance (cf. the categories of case, voice). Hence the necessity of further investigation.

What unites all the grammemes above and distinguishes them from the homonymous grammemes of the indicative mood as a system is

1) the meaning of «non-fact», the presentation of the action as something imaginary,

2) the system of opposemes, as contrasted with that of the indicative mood.

4. The Imperative Mood

The imperative mood represents an action as a command, urging, request, exhortation addressed 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, warn, search, do, etc. is the only one regularly met in speech (as to don't write, do write). The 'continuous' and 'passive' opposites of this grammeme (be writing, be searching, etc; be known, be warned, etc.) are very rare.

E.g. B e always searching for new sensations. (Wilde). Be warned in time, mend your manner. (Shaw).

Though the system of the 'imperative' mood does not contain 'person' opposemes, it cannot be said that there is no meaning of 'person' in the imperative mood grammemes. On the contrary, all of them are united by the meaning of 'second person' because it is always to his interlocutor (the second person) that the speaker addresses his order or request expressed with the help of – imperative mood forms. Thus the meaning of «second person» is a lexico-grammatical meaning common to all the imperative mood grammemes. This meaning makes it unnecessary to use the subject you with predicate verbs in the imperative mood. But sometimes you is used for emphasis, as in Don't you do it !

Some linguists are of the opinion that Modern English possesses analytical forms of the imperative mood for the first and the third person built up with the help of the semantically weakened unstressed let, as in Let him come, Let us g o , etc.

G.N. Vorontsova gives a detailed analysis of these constructions to prove that they are analytical forms of the imperative:

1) Sentences like Let’s let newspaper reporters take a crack at her (Gardner) prove that unlike the second let which is a notional verb the first let is devoid of lexical meaning.

2) It is quite possible to treat the objective case pronouns in the sentences Let me be frank, Let him look out, Let them both see, as the subjects.

3) An order can be addressed not only to the second person but to the third person as well.

Compare: Someone make an offer – and quick! (Barr).

Let someone make an offer.

4) The recognition of the let-constructions as the analytical forms of the imperative would make the imperative a developed morphological system.

All these considerations are serious enough. Still there are some objections to these constructions being regarded as analytical forms of the imperative.