Mood in Morphology

Abstract

The category of mood is closely related to modality, though specifically involves grammatical (inflectional) means for expressing core modal meanings (most notably, those of possibility and necessity). In other words, mood is defined as modality that is grammaticalized in the verbal system as an inflectional category. The category of mood is found in nearly all full-fledged inflectional verbal systems, along with the categories of aspect and tense. The typical opposition expected within the system of moods is the division into “indicative” and “non-indicative” moods, dependent on the real vs. irreal (or, more precisely, asserted vs. non-asserted) status of the proposition. There is no “preferable” morphological device for the expression of mood in the world’s languages—all the existing grammatical means are in demand, both synthetic and periphrastic. Among the segmental markers of mood affixal marking prevails, involving both prefixes and suffixes and various combinations thereof (yielding circumfixal marking). Non-segmental and suprasegmental marking of mood is less frequent, but also quite common. Another strategy for mood marking in the languages of the world is suppletion, when inflectional modal meanings require a different stem feeding into the verbal paradigm. Along with dedicated morphological markers of mood, there exists a plethora of cumulative types of marking, when mood is expressed simultaneously with other verbal categories, such as tense, aspect, voice, person, number, and possibly some others. The structure of mood as a grammatical category poses a challenge for universal typological descriptions, as the diversity of all its guises in the world’s languages is notoriously high. Imperative and subjunctive are regarded as the two core non-indicative members of mood domain attested cross-linguistically. A kind of terminological complication may arise with respect to the terms indicative vs. subjunctive and realis vs. irrealis. Still, there exist some points that reveal the differences between subjunctive and irrealis, syntactic distribution being one of the most essential (given that subjunctive is to be considered primarily as a morphological device for expressing syntactic subordination). Of course, the systems of mood in the world’s languages often display a greater diversity within the domain of non-indicative moods, and specifically epistemic and volitive values grammaticalize to separate inflectional forms, comprising various epistemic and optative moods respectively.