Irrealis mood
In linguistics, irrealis moods are the main set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened at the moment the speaker is talking. This contrasts with the realis moods. They are used in statements without truth value
Every language has grammatical ways of expressing unreality. Linguists tend to reserve the term "irrealis" for particular morphological markers or clause types. Many languages with irrealis mood make further subdivisions between kinds of irrealis moods. This is especially so among Algonquian languages such as Blackfoot.
List of irrealis moods
| Mood | Event, as intended by speaker | Example | Found in |
| Subjunctive | Event is considered unlikely. | "If I were to love you..." | |
| Conditional | Event depends upon another condition. | "I would love you" | |
| Optative | Event is hoped, expected, or awaited. | "May I be loved!" | |
| Jussive | Event is pleaded, implored or asked. | "Everyone should be loved" | |
| Potential | Event is probable or considered likely | "She probably loves me" | |
| Imperative Prohibitive | Event is directly ordered or requested by the speaker. Event is directly prohibited by the speaker. | "Love me!" "Do not love me" | |
| Desiderative | Event is desired/wished by a participant in the state of affairs referred to in the utterance | "I wish he loved me." | |
| Dubitative | Event is uncertain, doubtful, dubious. | "I think she loves me." | |
| Hypothetical | Event is hypothetical, or it is counterfactual, but possible. | "I might love you " | |
| Presumptive | Event is assumed, presupposed by the speaker. | "Knowing the way you love me " | |
| Permissive | Event is permitted by the speaker. | "You may love me..." | |
| Mirative Admirative | Event is surprising or amazing. | "Wow! They love me!", "Apparently they love me." | |
| Hortative | Event is exhorted, implored, insisted or encouraged by speaker. | "Let us love!" | |
| Event is likely but depends upon a condition; a combination of the potential and conditional. | "I would probably love you " | ||
| Event is requested by the speaker. | "Will you love me?" | Mongolian | |
| Volitive | Event is desired, wished or feared by the speaker. | "Would that you loved me!" / "God forbid you love me!" | Japanese |
| Inferential | Event is not witnessed and not confirmed. | "Something tells me she loves me." | |
| Necessitative | Event is necessary, or it is both desired and encouraged; a combination of the hortative and jussive. | "It is necessary that you should love me." | |
| Interrogative | Event is asked or questioned by the speaker | "Does he love me?" | |
| Benedictive | Event is requested or wished by the speaker in a polite or honorific fashion. | "Would you please be so kind as to love me?" | |
| Event is presupposed or admitted as part of a refutation. | "Even if she loves me "; "Although she loves me " | ||
| Event is prescribed by the speaker, but with the expectation that it will occur. | "Please love me."; "Go ahead, love me." | Mongolian | |
| | Event is warned against happening. | "Beware loving me." |
Moods
Subjunctive
The subjunctive mood, sometimes called conjunctive mood, has several uses in dependent clauses. Examples include discussing hypothetical or unlikely events, expressing opinions or emotions, or making polite requests. A subjunctive mood exists in English, but it often is not obligatory. Example: "I suggested that Paul an apple", Paul is not in fact eating an apple. Contrast this with the sentence "Paul an apple", where the verb "to eat" is in the present tense, indicative mood. Another way, especially in British English, of expressing this might be "I suggested that Paul an apple", derived from "Paul should eat an apple."Other uses of the subjunctive in English, as in "And not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his trespass...", have become archaic or formal. Statements such as "I shall ensure that immediately" often are formal, and often have been supplanted by constructions with the indicative, such as "I'll make sure immediately".
The subjunctive mood figures prominently in the grammar of the Romance languages, which require this mood for certain types of dependent clauses. This point commonly causes difficulty for English speakers learning these languages.
In certain other languages, the dubitative or the conditional moods may be employed instead of the subjunctive in referring to doubtful or unlikely events.
Conditional
The conditional mood is used to speak of an event whose realization is dependent upon another condition, particularly, but not exclusively, in conditional sentences. In Modern English, it is a periphrastic construction, with the form would + infinitive, e.g., I would buy. In other languages, such as Spanish or French, verbs have a specific conditional inflection. This applies also to some verbs in German, in which the conditional mood is conventionally called Konjunktiv II, differing from Konjunktiv I. Thus, the conditional version of "John eats if he is hungry" is:In the Romance languages, the conditional form is used primarily in the apodosis of conditional clauses, and in a few set phrases where it expresses courtesy or doubt. The main verb in the protasis is either in the subjunctive or in the indicative mood. However, this is not a universal trait: among others, in German and in Finnish the conditional mood is used in both the apodosis and the protasis.
A further example of Finnish conditional is the sentence "I would buy a house if I earned a lot of money", where in Finnish both clauses have the conditional marker -isi-: Ostaisin talon, jos ansaitsisin paljon rahaa, just like in Hungarian, which uses the marker -na/-ne/-ná/-né: Vennék egy házat, ha sokat keresnék. In Polish, the conditional marker -by also appears twice: Kupiłbym dom, gdybym zarabiał dużo pieniędzy. 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.
In French, while the standard language requires the indicative in the dependent clause, using the conditional mood in both clauses is frequently used by some speakers: Si j instead of Si j. This usage is heavily stigmatized. However, '''J is more accepted, as a colloquial form.
In the literary language, past unreal conditional sentences as above may take the pluperfect subjunctive in one clause or both, so that the following sentences are all valid and have the same meaning as the preceding example: Si j; Si j; Si j.
Optative
The optative mood expresses hopes, wishes or commands. Other uses may overlap with the subjunctive mood. Few languages have an optative as a distinct mood; some that do are Albanian, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Finnish, Avestan.In Finnish, the mood may be called an "archaic" or "formal imperative", even if it has other uses; nevertheless, it at least expresses formality. For example, the ninth Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins with:
where älköön pidätettäkö "shall not be arrested" is the imperative of ei pidätetä "is not arrested". Also, using the conditional mood -isi- in conjunction with the clitic -pa yields an optative meaning: olisinpa "if only I were". Here, it is evident that the wish has not been fulfilled and probably will not be.
In Sanskrit, the optative is formed by adding the secondary endings to the verb stem. The optative, as other moods, is found in active voice and middle voice. Examples: bhares "may you bear" and bharethaas "may you bear ". The optative may not only express wishes, requests and commands, but also possibilities, e.g., kadaacid goshabdena budhyeta "he might perhaps wake up due to the bellowing of cows", doubt and uncertainty, e.g., katham vidyaam Nalam "how would I be able to recognize Nala?" The optative may further be used instead of a conditional mood.
Jussive
The jussive mood expresses plea, insistence, imploring, self-encouragement, wish, desire, intent, command, purpose or consequence. In some languages, this is distinguished from the cohortative mood in that the cohortative occurs in the first person and the jussive in the second or third. It is found in Arabic, where it is called the مجزوم , and also in Hebrew and in the constructed language Esperanto. The rules governing the jussive in Arabic are somewhat complex.Potential
The potential mood is a mood of probability indicating that, in the opinion of the speaker, the action or occurrence is considered likely. It is used in many languages, including in Finnish, Japanese, and Sanskrit, and in the Sami languages.In Finnish, it is mostly a literary device, as it has virtually disappeared from daily spoken language in most dialects. Its suffix is -ne-, as in *men + ne + e → mennee " will probably go". Some kinds of consonant clusters simplify to geminates. In spoken language, the word kai "probably" is used instead, e.g., se kai tulee "he probably comes", instead of hän tullee.
Imperative
The imperative mood expresses direct commands, requests, and prohibitions. In many circumstances, using the imperative mood may sound blunt or even rude, so it is often used with care. Example: "Paul, do your homework now". An imperative is used to tell someone to do something without argument.Many languages, including English, use the bare verb stem to form the imperative. Other languages, such as Seri and Latin, however, use special imperative forms.
In English, second person is implied by the imperative except when first-person plural is specified, as in "Let's go".
The prohibitive mood, the negative imperative may be grammatically or morphologically different from the imperative mood in some languages. It indicates that the action of the verb is not permitted, e.g., "Do not go!". In Portuguese and Spanish, for example, the forms of the imperative are only used for the imperative itself, e.g., "vai embora!" "¡vete!", whereas the subjunctive is used to form negative commands, e.g., "não vás embora!" "¡no te vayas!".
In English, the imperative is sometimes used to form a conditional sentence: e.g., "Go eastward a mile, and you will see it" means "If you go eastward a mile, you will see it".
Desiderative
Whereas the optative expresses hopes, the desiderative mood expresses wishes and desires. Desires are what we want to be the case; hope generally implies optimism toward the chances of a desire's fulfillment. If someone desires something but is pessimistic about its chances of occurring, then one desires it but does not hope for it. Few languages have a distinct desiderative mood; three that do are Sanskrit, Japanese, and Proto-Indo-European.In Japanese the verb inflection -tai expresses the speaker's desire, e.g., watashi wa asoko ni ikitai "I want to go there". This form is treated as a pseudo-adjective: the auxiliary verb garu is used by dropping the end -i of an adjective to indicate the outward appearance of another's mental state, in this case the desire of a person other than the speaker.
In Sanskrit, the infix -sa-, sometimes -isa-, is added to the reduplicated root, e.g. jíjīviṣati "he wants to live" instead of jī́vati "he lives". The desiderative in Sanskrit may also be used as imminent: mumūrṣati "he is about to die". The Sanskrit desiderative continues Proto-Indo-European -se-.
Dubitative
The dubitative mood is used in Ojibwe, Turkish, Bulgarian and other languages. It expresses the speaker's doubt or uncertainty about the event denoted by the verb. For example, in Ojibwe, Baawitigong igo ayaa noongom translates as "he is in Baawitigong today." When the dubitative suffix -dog is added, this becomes Baawitigong igo ayaadog noongom, "I guess he must be in Baawitigong."Presumptive
The presumptive mood is used in Romanian and Hindi to express presupposition or hypothesis, regardless of the fact denoted by the verb, as well as other more or less similar attitudes: doubt, curiosity, concern, condition, indifference, inevitability. Often, for a sentence in presumptive mood, no exact translation can be constructed in English which conveys the same nuance.The Romanian sentence, acolo s-o fi dus "he must have gone there" shows the basic presupposition use, while the following excerpt from a poem by Eminescu shows the use both in a conditional clause de-o fi "suppose it is" and in a main clause showing an attitude of submission to fate le-om duce "we would bear".
In Hindi, the presumptive mood can be used in all the three tenses. The same structure for a particular grammatical aspect can be used to refer to the present, past and future times depending on the context. The table below shows the conjugations for the presumptive mood copula in Hindi and Romanian with some exemplar usage on the right:
Note:
- The translations are just the closest possible English approximations and not exact.
- Only masculine conjugations are shown for Hindi.