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# 22 The Category of Mood

Mood is the grammatical category of the verb reflecting the relation of the action denoted by the verb to reality from the speaker's point of view.

In the sentences He listens attentively; Listen attentively; You would have listened attentively if you had been interested, we deal with the same action of listening, but in the first sentence the speaker presents the action as taking place in reality, whereas in the second sentence the speaker urges the listener to perform the action, and in the third sentence the speaker presents the action as imaginary.

These different relations of the action to reality are expressed by different mood-forms of the verb: listens, listen, would have listened.

There is no unity of opinion concerning the category of mood in English. Thus A. I. Smirnitsky, O. S. Akhma-nova, M. Ganshina and N. Vasilevskaya find six moods in Modern English ('indicative', 'imperative', 'subjunctive Г, 'subjunctive 1Г, 'conditional' and 'suppositional'), B. A. Ilyish, L. P. Vinokurova, V. N. Zhigadlo, I. P. Iva-nova, L. L. lofik find only three moods — 'indicative', 'imperative' and 'subjunctive'. The latter, according to B. A. Ilyish appears in two forms — the conditional and the subjunctive. L. S. Barkhudarov and D. A. Shteling distinguish only the 'indicative' and the 'subjunctive' mood. The latter is subdivided into 'subjunctive Г and 'subjunctive II'. The 'imperative' and the 'conjunctive' are treated as forms outside the category of mood.

G. N. Vorontsova distinguishes four moods in English: 1) 'indicative', 2) 'optative', represented in three varieties ('imperative', 'desiderative', 'subjunctive'), 3) 'speculative', found in two varieties ('dubitative' and 'irrealis') and 4) 'presumptive'. In general the raumber of English moods in different theories varies from two to seventeen. In this book the indicative, imperative and subjunctive moods are considered.

The difficulty of distinguishing other moods from the indicative in English is connected with the fact that, barring be, they do not contain a single form which is not used in the indicative mood. At the same time the indicative mood contains many forms not used in other moods. The subjunctive mood is richer in forms than the imperative mood.

One of the most important differences between the indicative and the other moods is that the meaning of 'tense' does not go with the meanings of subjunctive mood and imperative mood. 'Tense' reflects the real time of a real action. The imperative and subjunctive moods represent the action not as real, but as desired or imagined, and the notions of real time are discarded 1.

The category of mood expresses the character of connection between the process denoted by the verb and the actual reality, either presenting the process as a fact that really happened, happens or will happen, or treating it as an imaginary phenomenon, i.e. the subject of a hypothesis, speculation, desire. It follows from this that the functional opposition underlying the category as a whole is constituted by the forms of oblique mood meaning, i.e. those of unreality, contrasted against the forms of direct mood meaning, i.e. those of reality, the former making up the strong member, the latter, the weak member of the opposition.

In this respect, it should be clear that the category of mood, like the category of voice, differs in principle from the immanent verbal categories of time, prospect, development, and retrospective coordination. Indeed, while the enumerated categories characterise the action from the point of view of its various inherent properties, the category of mood expresses the outer interpretation of the action as a whole, namely, the speaker's introduction of it as actual or imaginary. Together with the category of voice, this category, not reconstructing the process by way of reflecting its constituent qualities, gives an integrating appraisal of she process and establishes its lingual representation in a syntactic context.

The described system is not finished in terms of the historical development of language; on the contrary, it is in the state of making and change. Its actual manifestations are complicated by neutralisations of formal contrasts (such as, for instance, between the past indicative and the past subjunctive in reported speech); by neutralisations of semantic contrasts (such as, for instance, between the considerative modal spective and the desiderative modal spective); by fluctuating uses of the auxiliaries (would — should); by fluctuating uses of the finite be in the singular (were — was); etc.