Курсовая работа: The system of English verbs

Because modern English does not have all of the moods described below, and has a very simplified system of verb inflection as well, it is not straightforward to explain the moods in English. (The English moods are indicative, subjunctive, and imperative). Note, too, that the exact sense of each mood differs from language to language.

Grammatical mood per se is not the same thing as grammatical tense or grammatical aspect, although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages, including English and most other modern Indo-European languages, insofar as the same word patterns are used to express more than one of these concepts at the same time.

Currently identified moods include conditional, imperative, indicative, injunctive, negative, optative, potential, subjunctive, and more. Infinitive is a category apart from all these finite forms, and so are gerunds and participles. Some Uralic Samoyedic languages have over ten moods; Nenets has as many as sixteen. The original Indo-European inventory of moods was indicative, subjunctive, optative, and imperative. Not every Indo-European language has each of these moods, but the most conservative ones such as Avestan, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit have them all.

It should be noted that not all of the moods listed below are clearly conceptually distinct. Individual terminology varies from language to language, and the coverage of (e.g.) the «conditional» mood in one language may largely overlap with that of the «hypothetical» or «potential» mood in another. Even when two different moods exist in the same language, their respective usages may blur, or may be defined by syntactic rather than semantic criteria. For example, the subjunctive and optative moods in Ancient Greek alternate syntactically in many subordinate clauses, depending on the tense of the main verb. The usage of the indicative, subjunctive and jussive moods in Classical Arabic is almost completely controlled by syntactic context; the only possible alternation in the same context is between indicative and jussive following the negative particle lā.

Classification

Realis

Realis moods are a category of grammatical moods which indicate that something is actually the case, or actually not the case. The most common realis mood is the indicative mood or the declarative mood.

Declarative

The declarative mood indicates that the statement is true, without any qualifications being made. It is in many languages equivalent to the indicative mood, although sometimes distinctions between them are drawn. It is closely related with the inferential mood (see below).

Generic

The generic mood is used to make generalizations about a particular class of things, e.g. in «Rabbits are fast», one is speaking about rabbits in general, rather than about particular fast rabbits. English has no means of morphologically distinguishing generic mood from indicative mood, however the distinction can easily be understood in context by surrounding words. Compare, for example: rabbits are fast, versus, the rabbits are fast. Use of the definite article the implies specific, particular rabbits, whereas omitting it implies the generic mood simply by default.[6]

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: