Irrealis moods or non-indicative moods are the set of grammatical moods that indicate that something is not actually the case or a certain situation or action is not known to have happened. They are any verb or sentence mood that is not a realis mood. They may be part of expressions of necessity, possibility, requirement, wish or desire, fear, or as part of counterfactual reasoning, etc. Irrealis verb forms are used when speaking of an event which has not happened, is not likely to happen, or is otherwise far removed from the real course of events. For example, in the sentence "If you had done your homework, you wouldn't have failed the class",
had done is an irrealis verb form. Some languages have distinct irrealis
grammatical verb forms. Many
Indo-European languages preserve a
subjunctive mood. Some also preserve an
optative mood that describes events that are wished for or hoped for but not factual. Common irrealis moods are the conditional, the subjunctive, the optative, the jussive, and the potential. For other examples, see the main article for each respective mood.
Subjunctive The subjunctive mood, sometimes called conjunctive mood, has several uses in
dependent clauses. Examples include discussing imaginary or hypothetical events and situations, expressing opinions or emotions, or making polite requests (the exact scope is language-specific). A
subjunctive mood exists in English, though it is not an
inflectional form of the verb but rather a clause type which uses the bare form of the verb also used in imperatives, infinitives, and other constructions. An example of the English subjunctive is "Jill suggested
that Paul take his medicine", as opposed to the indicative sentence "
Jill believes that Paul takes his medicine". Other uses of the subjunctive in English are
archaisms, as in "And
if he be not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his trespass..." (
KJV,
Leviticus 5:7). Statements such as "I will ensure that he leave immediately" often sound archaic or formal, and have been largely supplanted by constructions with the indicative, like "I will ensure
that he leaves immediately". Some Germanic languages distinguish between two types of subjunctive moods, for example, the and in German.
1 In modern usage, the imperfect indicative usually replaces the imperfect subjunctive in this type of sentence. 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 (see the main article).
Conditional The conditional mood is used for speaking of an event whose realization is dependent upon another condition, particularly, but not exclusively, in
conditional sentences. In Modern English, this type of modality is expressed via a
periphrastic construction, with the form
would + infinitive, (for example,
I would buy), and thus is a mood only in the broad sense and not in the more common narrow sense of the term "mood" requiring morphological changes in the verb. In other languages, verbs have a specific conditional
inflection. In German, the conditional mood is identical to one of the two subjunctive moods
(Konjunktiv II, see above). In the
Romance languages, the conditional form is used primarily in the
apodosis (main clause) of conditional sentences, and in a few
set phrases where it expresses courtesy or doubt. The main verb in the
protasis (dependent clause) is usually in the subjunctive or in the indicative mood. However, this is not a universal trait and among others in
German (as above),
Finnish, and
Romanian (even though the last is a Romance language), the conditional mood is used in both the apodosis and the protasis. A further example is a sentence "I would buy a house if I earned a lot of money". •
Irish has conditional marking in both clauses: ''d'íosfadh'' 'would eat, would have eaten' and
beadh 'would be, would have been', along with a specific irrealis conditional
dá 'if', which contrasts with the realis conditional
má 'if' (i.e.
Ithfidh sé má bhíonn ocras air. 'He'll eat if he is hungry'). • In
Finnish, both clauses likewise have the conditional marker
-isi-:
Ostaisin talon, jos ansaitsisin paljon rahaa. • In
Polish (as well as in eastern and other western Slavic languages), the conditional marker
-by also appears twice:
Kupiłbym dom, gdybym zarabiał dużo pieniędzy. • In
Hindi, the conditional markers -ता (tā), -ती (tī), -ते (te) and -तीं (tī̃) (agreeing in gender and number with the subject and the direct object) comes twice: मैं घर खरीद
ता अगर बहौत पैसे कमा
ता। (maiṁ ghar kharīda
tā agar bahaut paisē kamā
tā). The conditional (or contrafactual) form in Hindi corresponds to perfect conditional of Romance and the Germanic languages. So, the sentence literally translate to
"I would have bought a house if I earned a lot of money." Imperative forms of Hindi verb
karnā (to do) are shown in the table belowː 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. For example, "Don't you go!" In English, the imperative is sometimes used for forming a
conditional sentence: for example, "go eastwards a mile, and you'll see it" means "if you go eastwards a mile, you will see it".
Jussive The jussive, similarly to the imperative, expresses orders, commands, exhortations, but particularly to a third person not present. An imperative, in contrast, generally applies to the listener. When a language is said to have a jussive, the jussive forms are different from the imperative ones, but may be the same as the forms called "subjunctive" in that language. Latin and Hindi are examples of where the jussive is simply about certain specific uses of the subjunctive. Arabic, however, is a language with distinct subjunctive, imperative, and jussive conjugations.
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
Finnish, in
Japanese, in
Sanskrit (where the so-called optative mood can serve equally well as a potential mood), in
Northern Wu, and in the
Sami languages. (In Japanese, it is often called something like
tentative, since
potential is used for referring to a
voice indicating capability to perform the action.) In Finnish, it is mostly a literary device, as it has virtually disappeared from daily spoken language in most dialects. Its affix is
-ne-, as in *
men +
ne +
e →
mennee "(he/she/it/they(sg)) will probably go". In
Hungarian, the potential is formed by the suffix
-hat/-het and it can express both possibility and permission: ad
hat "may give, can give"; Me
hetünk? "Can we go?" In English, it is formed by means of the auxiliaries
may,
can,
ought, and
must:
"She may go."
Presumptive The
presumptive mood is used 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, and inevitability. It is used in
Romanian,
Hindi,
Gujarati, and
Punjabi. In
Romanian, the presumptive mood conjugations of the verb
vrea are used with the infinitive form of verbs. The present tense and the past tense infinitives are respectively used to form the present and the past tense of the presumptive mood. In
Hindi, the presumptive mood conjugations of the verb
honā (to be) are used with the perfective, habitual, and progressive aspectual participles to form the perfective presumptive, habitual presumptive, and the progressive presumptive moods. The same presumptive mood conjugations are used for present, future, and past tenses.
Note: •
The translations are just the closest possible English approximations and not exact. •
Only masculine conjugations are shown for Hindi. Hypothetical A few languages use a
hypothetical mood, which is used in sentences such as "you could have cut yourself", representing something that might have happened but did not.
Inferential The inferential mood is used to report unwitnessed events without confirming them. Often, there is no doubt as to the veracity of the statement (for example, if it were on the news), but simply the fact that the speaker was not personally present at the event forces them to use this mood. In the
Balkan languages, the same forms used for the inferential mood also function as
admiratives. When referring to Balkan languages, it is often called
renarrative mood; when referring to
Estonian, it is called
oblique mood. The inferential is usually impossible to be distinguishably translated into English. For instance, indicative Bulgarian
той отиде (toy otide) and Turkish
o gitti will be translated the same as inferential
той отишъл (toy otishal) and
o gitmiş — with the English indicative
he went.
[1] Using the first pair, however, implies very strongly that the speaker either witnessed the event or is very sure that it took place. The second pair implies either that the speaker did not in fact witness it take place, that it occurred in the remote past or that there is considerable doubt as to whether it actually happened. If it were necessary to make the distinction, then the English constructions "he must have gone" or "he is said to have gone" would partly translate the inferential.
Interrogative The interrogative (or interrogatory) mood is used for asking questions. Most languages do not have a special mood for asking questions, but exceptions include
Welsh,
Nenets, and
Eskimo languages such as
Greenlandic.
Deontic mood vs. epistemic mood Linguists also differentiate moods into two parental irrealis categories:
deontic mood and
epistemic mood. Deontic mood describes whether one could or should be able to do something. An example of deontic mood is: She should/may start. On the other hand, epistemic mood describes the chance or possibility of something happening. This would then change our example to: She may have started. To further explain modality, linguists introduce weak mood. A weak deontic mood describes how a course of action is not recommended or is frowned upon. A weak epistemic mood includes the terms "perhaps" and "possibly". ==Moods in Oceanic languages==