Hi Shizuka,

Yes I believe you have the right idea there, with verbs like “think” the act of thinking itself is seen as real regardless of what is thought about. Questions, on the other hand, can be seen as realis when they ask for real information, e.g. “Did you go to school today?” – we may not know the answer, but it is a fact-based question, the yes or no answer is based on what really happened. However this depends on the type of question, a modal question on the other hand might not be realis, e.g. “Would you rather be a dog or a cat?” As I’ve said it’s not an area I’ve done a great deal of work in so I’m not sure these are the best ways to look at it, but yes, for the purposes of fact-based questions I would see interrogative as a subset of the indicative mood.

Hope this helps.

Phil

Hi Phil,

Thanks! Actually I think you already covered what I’m about to ask next but anyway, here goes:

So I suppose it is right to say that the indicative mood is the only realis mood for English?

Also, while I can easily understand why realis mood can cover facts, I am not so sure why it also covers opinions and questions since these two don’t concern facts per se, and so why are they considered “realis”? I think you’ve tried explaining abit of this concept with the example of “I think this is nice” and to explain it by saying that this is rooted in reality, i,e, even though the thought might be disproved, the action of thinking is real. Could you perhaps expound on this a little more, and also cover the part about why questions are also considered part of realis moood?

Lastly, there is such a thing called interrogative mode (basically the mode which covers all questions, i.e. when we ask a question, this means it is in the interrogative mode). If so, is it right to say that interrogative mode is a subset of the indicative mode, since indicative mode also covers questions?

Thanks!

Regards,
Shizuka

Hi Shizuka,

They are terms I’m familiar with but not ones I teach; yes you can use it for English, but it rather generalises lots of different functions into two groups, so I’m not sure how useful it is for students. Realis, as you say, would cover facts, opinions and questions (the latter two are rooted in reality, e.g. “I think this is nice.” = the thought might be disproved, but the action of thinking is real), while irrealis covers a span of moods that have different functions, such as subjunctive, conditional and imperative, which will more typically be studied separately than in a group.

Phil

Concerning the topic of grammatical mood, I’ve read somewhere which says that moods are broken down into two main categories: realis moods (expressing what is real or true) and irrealis moods (expressing what is unreal, hypothetical, or untrue), and that in English, the indicative mood is the only realis mood which can be used to press facts, statements, opinions, or questions.

Firstly, I don’t come across such a breakdown of English grammatical mood into realis and irrealis. Is such a teaching factual?

Secondly, is the definition of realis mood, that it can be used to press facts, statements, opinions, or questions, also factual?

Thanks!

Regards,
Shizuka

Hi Shizuka,

That’s an interesting perspective – it’s somewhat agruable because, as I think I said earlier, we often don’t think in terms of ‘mood’, it’s a grammatical definition used to help explain how language works. To some degree we could say mood isn’t necessarily present in the way we use English, and most native English speakers probably have no idea what the different moods are or when they are being used – but the purpose of moods is to categorise, and from this perspective it must be possible to fit all language into one or other of the moods, otherwise they would not be doing their job. So, in summary, we can certainly mostly get by without ever knowing or using the moods specifically, but no, all language and speech that’s formed in complete clauses should be able to fit into the mood definitions (we tell, mostly, through verbal patterns). Where we have sentence fragments, I suppose mood might be absent, but these would not be complete grammatical ideas anyway (and if properly interrogated would probably fit into a mood pattern if expanded into their true meaning, e.g. “the yellow paint” might be a phrase on its own replying to a question, but might actually mean “The yellow paint is the one I want.”, an imperative response.

I hope this helps.

Phil

My apologies to revisit this point again, but this came up from a conversation I recently had with another classmate. Remember that in the earlier comments we both agreed that “all thoughts/ideas expressed in speech or writing through sentences/clauses etc, will occur in any one of the three grammatical moods, with the indicative mood being the default and most common mood”. In other words, I would say that most of the time (like maybe 99 percent of the time), whenever we say or write something, it will be in the indicative mood (literally the conversation that I had with my classmate being one example of indicative mood) since indicative mood is used to express facts, statements, opinions and questions, which covers just about anything we have to say or write – this is true, isn’t it?

However, my classmate kept insisting that in her view, it is possible for speech or writing to not have any mood at all. Is her view valid?

Thanks!

Regards,
Shizuka✨

Hi Shizuka,

Yes I think you’ve essentially covered it there! There may be more moods too depending on the very specifics of grammar. Your second point there is true though, when we speak English we’re not actively thinking about moods and deciding which is appropriate, moods are really used the other way round – to explain how/why something has been said. Indeed the indicative mood will be most common, and the others come out as needed in specific circumstances. I don’t generally teach mood much myself; when I’m covering grammar it’s usually concerned with elements such as positive statements and questions, looking at such structures, the indicative mood is covered without necessarily naming it. It’s only really when we look at the subjunctive or an imperative that the mood becomes important, as diverging from more expected grammar.

Hi Phil,

Thanks for sharing the article! Ah I see, so while English may generally be defined to posses only three grammatical moods (indicative, subjunctive and imperative), because the indicative mood covers a broad range of sentence types (i.e. acts/statements to thoughts/opinions and even questions), some people may choose to further breakdown the indicative mood by extracting the questions and conditional sentences from the indicative mood and calling them interrogative mood (for questions) and conditional mood (for conditional sentences), and instead leave indicative mood only for sentences which really cover facts and opinions expressed as facts. As such, what started out as three major grammatical moods (indicative, subjunctive and imperative) can also snowball into 5 grammatical moods (subjunctive, indicative, imperative, conditional and interrogative)?

Secondly, thanks for confirming the accuracy of the points above, however, for point (d), I find this concept hard to grasp. I mean when writing or speaking, it generally doesn’t even occur to me what mood I am writing or speaking in, so its hard to factor the concept of “mood” into my everyday use.
Still, that being said, its true that all thoughts/ideas expressed in speech or writing through sentences/clauses etc, will occur in any one of the three grammatical moods, with the indicative mood being the default and most common mood (an example the summary above or this very article itself), isn’t it?

P.S. My apologies if the second point above seems to be repetitive, however it does help me to better comprehend the topic. Thanks for your patience and time!

Regards,
Shizuka

Hi Shizuka,

Your points are correct in principle but the exact number of moods we use will vary depending on who you talk to (that is, some teachers will teach, 3,4 or 5…). For instance, we can also discuss interrogative as a mood, and conditional may be separated from subjunctive. The wikipidea article has lots on information on this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_mood

Best,

Phil

Dear Phil,

Thanks. To summarize:

(a) English only has three grammatical moods (indicative, imperative and subjunctive) mood.

(b) all three grammatical moods can be used in any of the English grammatical tenses (12 in total)

(c) like tenses, all three grammatical moods can also be used in conjunction with any grammatical persons (first , second and third)

(d) all thoughts/ideas expressed in speech or writing through sentences/clauses etc, will occur in any one of the three grammatical moods, with the indicative mood being the default and most common mood (an example being this very summary)

(e) similar to point (d) above, the indicative mood is most commonly used, and its uses include to express almost anything from facts/statements to thoughts/opinions and even questions. The subjunctive mood is more often used to express hypothetical scenarios or wishes and the imperative is used to issue commands/instructions.

Thus far, may I know if the above summary is correct?

Thanks!

Regards,
Shizuka