Mood, Clause Types, and Illocutionary Force

Abstract

Clause types are recognized through morphosyntactic, lexical, and prosodic form, their use in main and subordinate clauses, and behavior under negation. The semantics of a clause type is its primary illocution (PI), which is sometimes identifiable with mood. The PI signals Speaker's illocutionary intention in using the clause type and is the starting point for the pragmatic inferences that give rise to the illocutionary point of the utterance containing the clause. Space limits detailed discussion to English declaratives, interrogatives, imperatives, hypotheticals, expressives, and exclamatives. It is suggested that the method used here is applicable to other languages, many of which will have a similar inventory, or partial inventory, of clause types.