Talk:Grammatical mood/Archive 1

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Archive 1

some discussion...

Some discussion about "simplifying and structuring sections" in regards to harmonizing and disambiguating the entanglements
within English &tc. mood, mode, modal and modality has been moved from here to a work space. Thank you Ruakh.
(Help reduce "Redirects all over the place". There are many more than the few listed here.) — Ken^(talk) August 6, 2005

Aside the two moods I'm really familiar with (imperative/indicative), I'm not really sure that injunctive/subjunctive moods are different. Furthermore, I turned unsure whether there is a universal language independent mood description. Shall we just have examples from many languages, and let the language page itself define the ones used correctly?

I took out the injunctive mood from the main article. Hopefully someone who actually knows what it is will reinsert it. -- hajhouse

Actually, the Conditional is a potential but not realized action, seperate from the subjunctive's hypothetical actions, I think.

In French, Conditional and Subjunctive are different. -- Tarquin

== OBS! Avait is marked as a subjunctive, but it is an imperfect form - ait is the third person singular present subjunctive). This is a "unlikely"(ie the condition is unlikely to occur) si clause, so si is followed by imparfait. I suppose it is possible that at one point in time subjonctif imparfait(as in spanish) would have been used "Jean mangerait s'il eut faim" but that would be unusual today, much of past subjontif use seem to have been replaced by "easier" forms such as the imparfait, passe compose or plus-que-parfait. Thus it makes no sense to include the french version. Would be nice to have an expert clear things up on this page, things seem messy.

"The subjunctive part of the conditional version of "John eats if he is hungry" is:

   John would eat if he were hungry, in English;
   Johannes äße, wenn er hungrig wäre, in German;
   Jean mangerait s'il avait faim, in French;
   Juan comería si tuviera hambre, in Spanish."

==

It would be useful to see the distinction between subjunctive and hypothetical explained. Charmii 15:51, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

In Japanese, the negative is a distinct grammatical mood. Example: nagenu, throw, but negenai, not throw.

As native Japanese speaker, I am not sure this is right. -- Taku 23:25, 17 March 2003 (UTC)

In the Romance languages, subjunctives express like/desire, the *hypothesis* of an inference (the conditional expresses the *conclusion* of the inference), or estabilishing a conditional restriction on a statement -- in fact, both Japanese conditional forms ~eba/~tara would probably translate into subjunctives in Romance languages.

As for the injunctive, I seem to understand it is only attested in Indo-Iranian branch, and maybe in early Greek and Hittite, and it seems to indicate an "underspecified" form of a verb (whatever that means). -- Wtrmute

I've been doing some research, and I found a mention of a paper by Paul Kiparsky of Stanford link which mentions the injunctive as being a "moodless" mood in early Vedic sanskrit, that is, acquiring mood and tense from context rather than explicit marking, as opposed to an alternative view as merely mentioning rather than narrating or asserting an event.

This means that the injunctive should be either: (a) a mood which takes its aspect from context, or (b) a mood which is used for mentioning an event occurring (maybe translatable as "I remember that..."?) If I could get my hands on the paper proper, I could perhaps get a better handle on things. I'll keep everyone posted if I do. -- Wtrmute

Shouldn't this article say something about the use of "let's" in English to form the equivalent of the 1st person plural imperative? — Hippietrail 08:32, 30 August 2004 (UTC)

Redirects all over the place

Just in case nobody's picked it up, several of the links to specific moods lower on the list (Eventive and Potential at the very least) simply redirect to this article. If anyone knows enough about the languages using them (Finno-Ugric languages all, by the sounds), it would be very handy indeed to create some articles on them and avoid the redirects. BigHaz 06:32, 6 September 2004 (UTC)

Hi! Please, see Finnish language grammar. There are some information of moods. Henri Tapani Heinonen 16:22, 21 September 2004 (UTC)

Jussive

Someone should add a Jussive section. That mood is mentionned in the Eventive article --Circeus 00:47, 2 October 2004 (UTC)

conjunctive mood

"Conjunctive mood" in Latin links here, but there's no explanation of it here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.250.124.156 (talk) 06:03, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Grammatical mood == Grammatical voice?

Perhaps add a note at the beginning that these are one in the same. Otherwise re-direct a search for "grammatical voice" to this article.

They aren't the same. The active, passive, and middle voices have to do with changing the way semantic arguments of a verb (agent, patient, etc.) match up with its syntactic arguments (subject, direct object, etc.). That has nothing to do with the mood distinctions between imperative, interrogative, and so forth. --Jim Henry | Talk 19:48, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

To merge or not to merge...

When is someone finally going to cut the cord and either have it merged or not? I know that there are many reasons as to why it should or shouldn't be merged but if we're going to keep discussing it, no one will ever be exposed to the renarrative mood.

Hell, I only just heard about it because I wanted to find out what kind of moods there are in languages. (I'm doing this because I'm creating a language of my own)

So let's be dramatic and imagine someone either creating a language too or having to do a paper, both with an interest in grammatical moods. Wouldn't it be fun and let's not forget easy, to type in grammatical moods and have a (semi)complete list of them all, including the renarrative mood?

I mean, my reason for coming here is to learn about things that I've heard and want more information about and to read completely new things. I'm practically certain that the majority of people come here for the same reason or am I horribly wrong? Thanks for reading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Narqalaq (talk • contribs) 21:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Optative - To merge?

It seems kind of pointless to have a separate article for the optative mood when this article goes into the subject in more depth than the separate article does. IMO, these should be merged. -Yupik 21:37, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I noticed this gap as well. Malangthon 03:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Ditching weird section about Category of mood

The section at the end, ==Category of mood after M. Y. Blokh==, appears to be copied (poorly) from some other source. It repeats information covered effectively in the article, and worse, it's confusing and needs cleaning up. I have commented out the offending section. ThePedanticPrick 21:08, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Interrogative Mood

This article states that Japanese has an interrogative mood, whereas the interrogative mood article implies that it doesn't, instead employing the syntax-particle pattern. I know that it does use a particle, but I'm uncertain of whether or not it has a mood. Could someone clarify this for me, as I think the article is potentially misleading otherwise. tychon 02:41, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I just noticed this; since it is unclear what exactly is meant by Japanese having an interrogative mood, I have removed it. If someone can explain what was meant/justify the inclusion, we can restore it. --RJCraig 02:17, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Mood versus modality

There are articles for Grammatical mood (basically a list of moods with brief explanations), Linguistic modality, and List of grammatical moods. There seems to be some redundancy here, but I'm not sure what should be merged into what... FilipeS 12:52, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

IMO the list should go away (redirect here); the bottom part of Linguistic modality should be merged here. SIL's approach and definition seem reasonable: basically, they define "modality" as semantic category, while "mood" is its syntactic/gramatical realization. Duja► 13:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

..and, btw, several "{{main}}" articles should be merged/redirected here and marked with {{R with possibilities}}, especially now when the software supports redirects to sections. I'm thinking of Realis, Irrealis, Alethic moods etc. There's no need to spread so little information across so many articles. Duja► 13:37, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Merge of prohibitive mood

I have recommended that the content of the article prohibitive mood be merged into this article. It's a one-line article that, if I'm not mistaken, belongs under the "Irrealis moods" section. I will leave the actual performance of the merge to someone more knowledgeable on the subject than I. -- Black Falcon 00:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the Conditional is a potential but not realized action, seperate from the subjunctive's hypothetical actions, I think.

In French, Conditional and Subjunctive are different. -- Tarquin

It would be useful to see the distinction between subjunctive and hypothetical explained. Charmii 15:51, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

In Japanese, the negative is a distinct grammatical mood. Example: nagenu, throw, but negenai, not throw.

As native Japanese speaker, I am not sure this is right. -- Taku 23:25, 17 March 2003 (UTC)

In the Romance languages, subjunctives express like/desire, the *hypothesis* of an inference (the conditional expresses the *conclusion* of the inference), or estabilishing a conditional restriction on a statement -- in fact, both Japanese conditional forms ~eba/~tara would probably translate into subjunctives in Romance languages.

As for the injunctive, I seem to understand it is only attested in Indo-Iranian branch, and maybe in early Greek and Hittite, and it seems to indicate an "underspecified" form of a verb (whatever that means). -- Wtrmute

I've been doing some research, and I found a mention of a paper by Paul Kiparsky of Stanford link which mentions the injunctive as being a "moodless" mood in early Vedic sanskrit, that is, acquiring mood and tense from context rather than explicit marking, as opposed to an alternative view as merely mentioning rather than narrating or asserting an event.

This means that the injunctive should be either: (a) a mood which takes its aspect from context, or (b) a mood which is used for mentioning an event ocurring (maybe translatable as "I remember that..."?) If I could get my hands on the paper proper, I could perhaps get a better handle on things. I'll keep everyone posted if I do. -- Wtrmute

Shouldn't this article say something about the use of "let's" in English to form the equivalent of the 1st person plural imperative? — Hippietrail 08:32, 30 August 2004 (UTC)

Indicative (evidential) mood and examples questioned

There's something fishy about both the explanation and one of the examples : "Paul is reading books" strikes me as just plain wrong, and is not a sentence I would ever use, whereas "Paul reads books" is fine. I would certainly not treat them as equivalent. "Paul is reading some books" works better and "Paul reads some books" is also fine. "Paul is signing letters" / "Paul signs letters" or "Paul is drinking coffee" / "Paul drinks coffee" also work. But in all these cases, the MEANING of the two sentences seems to differ subtly so that they are not equivalent. Also consider "Go away! Can't you see I'm working?", which I have uttered many times, vs "Go away! Can't you see I work?", which just doesn't ... well, work, really :-). "I am drinking/reading/working" seem to imply either immediacy or imminence of action in most cases, while "I drink/read/work" mostly seem to imply potentiality or statement of a property. However "I am working for them " and "I work for them" seem to be roughly equivalent. Heck, I just can't quite put my finger on it! Any linguists who can explain this, please?!? Daen 15:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

"Paul is reading books" sounds wrong mostly because it seems to imply that Paul has the unnatural ability to read mutiple books simultaniously, though it could aslo mean that he is currently in the process of reading multiple books; a better example could be used. The thing that is confusing you is that "Paul reads books" exists out of time: it does not neccisarily mean that Paul is currently reading, but rather that reading is an acctivity in which Paul partakes. Phsyron 02:36, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Renarrative mood

I suggested that article to be merged (better, redirected) to this one. It says that renarrative mood is specific to Bulgarian and Turkish, but I'm not sure whether it's the same as Admirative or is it something else? Examples, anyone? Duja 15:09, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they refer to the same thing. Again, as my contribution notes, the admirative patterns in Balkan languages are derived from, and form a subset of, similar Turkish constructs, except that in Turkish grammar these constructs are called (compound) inferential tenses; in fact, I don't see a renarrative mood mentioned in the Turkish_grammar page. Perhaps these features of Turkish should be mentioned or linked here and their influence on the Balkan admirative/renarrative mood made clearer. Apapa 00:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

hi.

While I havent heard of renarrative before, if it marks "doubtful or nonwitnessed events", then it is simulataneously marking (1) evidentiality & (2) epistemic modality. However, if is equivalent to admirative, then it is marking mirativity and probably evidentiality as well (this is very common). I actually havent read what Turkish admirative mood does, but you can probably find the answer in Aikhenvald (2004, 2003) and DeLancey (1997). I be interested to know what you find out.

peace – ishwar (speak) 03:37, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Apapa is quite right that they refer to (more or less) the same thing (the same morphological forms), but Ish_ishwar is also right to point out the difference between them (theoretically). In fact, the same morphological forms can be used to express "re-narrating" and "admirativity" (surprise). The first function is commonly regarded as primary in modern Bulgarian grammar. This doesn't mean, however, that the moods themselves are the same. The version of the article I just saw equated admirative with renarratice and then went on to define it as "expressing susrprise, doubt etc.". While admirative does express surprise by definition, the Bulgarian renarrative is certainly not defined as expresing surprise etc., at least not primarily. --91.148.159.4 20:31, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

renarrative = admirative (= narrative = mediative)? Yes (or maybe no)

Yes, it is the same. It definitely should be merged. It's an enormous mess of equivalent terms I'm dealing with right now.

This was me in one of my earliest edits to wiki talk pages. I was wrong, as I didn't realize the nuances of the question at the time. (see above). --91.148.159.4 20:31, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

see below for continuation of discussion.

Duplication in Talk Page?

It seems as if the last person who left a comment accidentally created sections 18-33 by duplicating 2-17.

Could someone who can verify that the sections are identical edit this page to correct it? Agaricus (talk) 01:30, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. FilipeS (talk) 14:36, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Inferential mood

Someone please fix this sentence at the end of "Inferential mood": "The second pair implies either that the speaker did not in fact witness it take place, that it occurred in the some past or that there is considerable doubt as to whether it actually happened." I don't know what what the second clause should say, but it shouldn't say "...in the some past...". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.50.143.180 (talk) 16:14, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

"Negative Mood"

I am quite sure that Negative Mood should be excluded from that list. Negative and Affirmative are items of an own category and this has nothing to to with mood. A verb can per definition only get one single item of a category. What if you have a verb that in some context requires to be negative and subjunctive? I've never heard of a "negative mood" in linguistics. We should delete or move that section... —N-true 20:24, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Please vote at the Move proposal (negative) section below. - TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 02:41, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Move proposal (negative)

Resolved

While a sentence has one and only one grammatical mood, affirmative and negative are independent from mood and able to combine with a mood. They should be categorized in grammatical polarity. The SIL's definitions are as follows:

Done. - TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 03:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Rrrupley.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Disappearance of Moods!!!

Whoa...

All the moods have been taken out of this article and moved to the articles Realis mood and Irrealis mood, accordingly. Now, that's all well and good, but, this article should still retain a list of all the moods with brief, one-sentence explanations of what they are and what they are used for, with links saying Main article: Indicative, etc. There need to be these separate explanations of each mood, however, rather than just two links to Realis and Irrealis.

Although, actually, "Grammatical mood" is a much better-known concept (and a much more important one) than "realis" and "irrealis" so, if anything, those two articles should be the shorter ones, and the "Grammatical Mood" article should retain the ENTIRE list of moods, with the realis article, for example, having a re-direct saying "Main Article - Grammatical mood". Looking forward to peoples' contributions to the debate. Nic. 62.176.111.68 (talk) 16:17, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, we have a problem here. You see, my impression was the opposite of yours. I felt that the article was excessively long, and merely a list of mostly obscure moods, instead of being a coherent, concise explanation of the general concept of mood. But to each his own. I'm looking forward to hearing more opinions.

Meanwhile, I guess we could very well add a list of moods at the bottom of the article. In fact, there is already a link to Category:Grammatical moods, but I suppose a list would be more explicit. FilipeS (talk) 21:36, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, i agree with you that the article was getting too long - my suggestion for the Grammatical Mood article would be somewhere in the middle - perhaps a list of moods (with official subheadings, as it was before), but only with brief one-two sentence explanations of each, with a Main Article link to a separate, detailed article for each. (and some, which didnt have their own articles yet, such as renarrative, will have them created).

on the issue of the articles for Realis and Irrealis moods, however - i don't think that those two articles should list the moods themselves, but rather deal with the idea of Realis/Irreaslis and compare and analyze them ... and perhaps even the two articles should be merged into a single article called "Realis and Irrealis Moods", which would help with the analysis of comparisons and contrasts - but the actual list of moods ought to remain under the Gram Mood article. what do you think? Nic 62.176.111.68 (talk) 12:27, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's alright, I guess. One problem I had with the previous version of this article was that many moods were very poorly explained. There didn't seem to be much of a difference between several of them, apart from their name. Explaining them with just one or two sentences is not going to be easy. Furthermore, many of the moods do not have articles of their own where the rest of the text could be moved to. Nor should they have articles of their own, in my opinion, since as of now there is very little to say about them.

But I don't oppose the idea of moving the moods back here, simplifying the explanation of some of them by moving some of the text to their own articles (like in the case of the subjunctive), or creating new articles when that is justified (as in the case of the renarrative). Just don't create a new article for each mood, please; we simply don't have enough to say about most of them, for now. Merging Realis and Irrealis might not be a bad idea, either.

Here's a suggestion, though: wait a few days, to see if anyone else comes up with another suggestion, before you do anything. Regards. FilipeS (talk) 11:17, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Excellent - i'm up for all your thinking! (especially on not force-creating articles) It's quite a long issue anyway, so it'll probably take more than a few days to resolve as it is :-) but little by little i'm sure it'll sort itself out!

(perhaps we could add a merge template to the realis/irrealis articles with a link to this discussion page, to foment discussion? i'll leave it to you to decide whether to do this or not) I'm glad we've got this sorted, and will continue to collaborate. stay safe! (ps. has someone hijacked your page or is the Australia tag supposed to be there?!) Nic 62.176.111.68 (talk) 18:06, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for the warning about my user talk page. :-) FilipeS (talk) 10:09, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Renarrative, Inferrential, Admirative, Mediative or Oblique???

Hi,

I want to make a separete article for this mood as it is getting quite long and unruly here (or, where it currently is - July '08). However, i do not know what to call the page - one of the abovementioned names; all of them; which one?

More importantly, however - how far do all these moods overlap and therefore do they all refer to the same mood??? after all, in many languages they have different uses - so if we do make a page called "Renarrative", for example - should the separate pages for "Inferrential", "Admirative", etc automatically redirect to it, or should they stay separate?????

Please discuss (on this talk page)... BigSteve (talk) 08:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Performative?

Is a performative utterance considered a mood, a speech act, or both? Lucidish — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucidish (talk • contribs) 16:16, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

'Performative' is a type of speech act. Performatives generally use indicative or other realis mood, but such things don't usually get much attention in speech act theory. Cnilep (talk) 22:41, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Please help with new section on moods in specific languages

In response to the above comment by Szipucsu, I have started a section on moods of specific languages. I'd appreciate it if anyone could chip in to expand this section. I agree that right now the article is mainly theoretical, but it needs some empirical content as well. Duoduoduo (talk) 21:09, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Mood is a property of a (finite) clause

The article needs to emphasize more the relationship between the concepts of mood, clause and finite and non-finite verbs. A finite verb in a clause has a mood. (You might be able to argue that non-finite verbs also are a type of mood.) In some languages, for example French and German, it is common to have a main clause in the indicative mood, and a dependent clause in the subjunctive mood. This shows that mood is useful for understanding the top-level structure of a sentence. Count Truthstein (talk) 23:56, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Conditional in English

Because English is used as a lingua franca, a similar kind of doubling of the word would is a fairly common way to misuse an English language construction: *I would buy if I would earn.... As in this wrong case, in English, the would + infinitive construct can be employed in main clauses, with a subjunctive sense: "If you would only tell me what is troubling you, I might be able to help".

This claim seems dubious to me. Such sentences are perfectly acceptable and used by native speakers of English. They are not a creation of speakers of other languages. FilipeS (talk) 11:43, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

English Subjunctive

This article overstates English's loss of the subjunctive. In reality, almost everybody uses the subjunctive in English every day. People don't often realize this because there is no special form of the verb in English to express the subjunctive — it is identical in form to the past tense:

Indicative: I am a millionaire.

Formal subjunctive: I wish I were a millionaire.

Informal subjunctive: I wish I was a millionaire.

If there were truly no subjunctive mood in English we would say "I wish I am a millionaire" but everybody would agree this is ungrammatical whether they know what the subjunctive mood is or not. — Hippietrail 11:55, 2 October 2004 (UTC) >> Absolutely! Ken H 02:34, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Not quite. It's true that in English the subjunctive and the indicative are usually the same; it's also true that formal English uses the subjunctive in constructions like "I wish I were...". But you've picked one of the few verbs where the indicative and the subjunctive are different. Were is the past subjunctive; was is the past indicative. So in informal English we use the past indicative in such constructions. As does French:

Si seulement j'étais millionnaire.

French clearly uses the imperfect indicative here; the imperfect subjunctive (never used) is je fusse; imperfect indicative is je sois. (Forgive me if I've made a mistake here, my French is a little rusty.)

The present subjunctive of to be is be - as in be that as it may.

Hope that clarifies matters! -- Blisco 08:59, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Sure. As long as you add that present subjunctive can be used to express hope of the future, "Would I be true..." while past subjunctive can be used to express counterfactual current state, "Would I were true..." Then you can explicate the differences in "If I be true...", "If I am true...", "If I were true..." and "If I was true..." Halfelven 10:10, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

"Would I were true..."? Even as an American English speaker who uses the subjunctive regularly (and overly in many cases) this doesn't sound grammatical at all. I don't think that the modal "would" can govern anything but the bare infinitive of the modified verb, yielding the only available past tense in this case "Would I have been true...", both "Would I was true", and "Would I were true" just don't sound like they fit in English at all. --Puellanivis 19:58, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm slightly confused... I'm pretty sure that the 'informal' subjunctive is simply because native English speakers, not being taught what a 'subjunctive mood' is... don't understand why they go from 'I am' to 'I were'... it seems more natural to use the past tense, 'was.' The usage of 'were' seems ungrammatical if you were never taught it, and thus they use the prescriptively ungrammatical past tense, 'was'. As far as other uses of the English Subjunctive.. check out many formulaic subjunctives, such as "Heaven Forbid!" or "truth be told" among others... "Come what may" for another without the use of the verb "be". Retailmonica (talk) 15:46, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be a discussion of some of the proposed classification schemes for types of mood, e.g. epistemic and deontic modality? There doesn't seem to be an article on this topic yet. If I were to add something, would it belong on this page, or should a separate page (or pages) be created for it? --Savage 19:53, 28 October 2004 (UTC) >> Yes, but more is needed. Ken H 02:34, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Also, is the term "mood" synonymous with "modality" (and therefore encompassing modal verbs and evidential particles), or is it limited to inflectional verb forms? If the latter, there should definitely be a page on modality as a general grammatical category. --Savage 19:53, 28 October 2004 (UTC) >> Controversial. There is such a section. Also please see above Simplifying sections. Ken H 02:34, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

'as in Afrikaans or French: "Je ne sais pas." ... as in Russian or Esperanto: "Li ne iras."'

This looks confusing (as 'je ne sais pas' doesn't seem to be Afrikaans), I find the mix lang examples all over the page a bit confusing, wouldn't it be better providing example pages of moods of several different languages? Thus, someone familiar with French could go to the French example page, and so forth.

What mood are the following sentences in: How I wonder what you are! How pretty that is! Could these be counted as interrogative because they're really asking "How (much) am I wondering what you are?" and "How pretty is that?"

Response : I would say the "How..." examples are indicative, since "how" is not acting as an interrogative but as an adverb - I [how] wonder, that is [how] pretty. There is no doubt in these examples, it is merely an idiom for saying something like "Nobody can guess how much I wonder what you are." or something along those lines.

Input from a nonexpert, only a humble user of the language. "I suggested that Paul read some books" is a common form for me (I grew up in England, 1950 - 80), although I now find, after moving to the U.S., I need to recast it to "I suggested that Paul read some books" to avoid misunderstanding. Perhaps this should be considered an older generation British English construction, but it was/is certainly not uncommon in that context.

What's the difference between the two? FilipeS 20:06, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

So many people do not realize that "May The Force be with you," is a sentence in the subjunctive mood. So is, "Let God hold you in the palm of his hand." These are subjunctive because we have NO IDEA if either of these will ever be carried out, hence they can be contrafactual.98.67.166.78 (talk) 03:27, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

The Emphatic Mood

The emphatic mood has been completely omitted here, and there isn't even an article in the Wikipedia on this one. In English, the emphatic mood is created by using the auxiliary verb "to do". Here are some example sentences:
"Yes, I do go to work on time every weekday," emphasizing that this is really done and that is is not a vapid claim.
"You do have the shaggiest dog that mankind has ever seen."
"Manfred did trade in his little red Volkswagen for a big black Mercedes Benz last week. Yes, he really did buy a big, expensive car for a change!
"I really did want to become a schoolteacher, but I changed my mind in college and I became an engineer instead." "English does have an emphatic mood, but many languages such as German do not."
98.67.166.78 (talk) 03:40, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Which are the moods of English language?

It would be essential to get an answer in this article. But I cannot find it. (The answer is maybe Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative but according to another opinion Conditional is also a mood in English. Is it?) (you are - you were - be - you would be) --Szipucsu (talk) 22:01, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Anyway I think the article is too theoretical. What about writing some words about the moods of English language with examples and the moods of other Germanic languages? Then some words about other Indo-European languages (and eventually some other languages). --Szipucsu (talk) 22:08, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

From a linguistics perspective, a mood is a type of inflectional verb form, so the English "would go" is not a mood; it is a way of expressing one type of modality, which is a broader concept that allows either syntactic or inflectional constructions. On the other hand, from a traditional grammar perspective, it is a mood.

So the moods in English, linguistically speaking, are the indicative, imperative, and subjunctive. For a longer list of English moods from a traditional grammar perspective, see English conjugation tables#Mood. Duoduoduo (talk) 17:23, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

However, the whole article on English conjugation tables was deleted on June 1, 2011, so you haven't done anyone any good with this paragraph! People absolutely must check into RED wikilinks to find out why, and here it is December 29, 2012, 1.5 years later, and nobody had done so before me. RED wikilinks are poisonous snakes.
98.67.166.78 (talk) 04:19, 30 December 2012 (UTC)