Some languages have a morphological system (generally, of inflection on the verb) marking the three moods. However, many languages lack this. Declara- tive mood is typically left unmarked, as the default speech act. Imperative is often shown by a verbal suffix, and there may be different suffixes for positive and negative imperative, or polite and brusque, or near and distant.
There are two varieties of interrogatives:
(i) A content question, shown by a content question word. In English these are who, what, which, why, where, when, and how. The label ‘wh- words’ is often used for the content question words in English since all except for how begin with wh-. (This label would not be appropriate for other languages.) There may, in addition, be morphological marking of a clause being a content question and/or a distinctive pattern of intonation.
(ii) A polar question (sometimes called a ‘yes/no’ question; this is not a good general term since there are languages lacking words ‘yes’ and ‘no’). For example, Can [your brother]a speak Germano? In many languages this is shown simply by intonation (typically, but not invariably, final rising intonation). Some languages have—in addition to intonation,
or instead of it—a polar interrogative affix or particle. English shows a polar question by reversing the order of the subject constituent and the first word of the auxiliary, in addition to rising intonation.
‘Declarative’, ‘interrogative’, and ‘imperative’ are grammatical labels, while ‘statement’, ‘command’, and ‘question’ describe type of speech act. A command typically involves a main clause marked grammatically as an imperative. But there are often other grammatical constructions which can be used to convey a command, with milder pragmatic effect; for example Would youa mind opening [the window]o? or I a wish [that somebodya—directing gaze at a person—would open [the window]o]cocl:o.
It is important to carefully distinguish mood from modality. Mood—a property of the sentence—deals with speech acts of the three recurrent types declarative, imperative, and interrogative. Modality—which relates to a clause and its predicate—describes semantic distinctions within an irrealis specifi- cation. The modal auxiliary verbs in English are typical markers of modality, including must (necessity), should and ought to (obligation), will (prediction), and can (ability). Some linguists confuse mood and modality, conflating these two quite different types of specification. In fact, mood and modality have totally different meanings and functions, and should always be clearly distin- guished. (The adjective ‘modal’ is appropriately used in relation to modality, not to mood.) There is discussion of modality in §3.15.
It was pointed out in Chapter1 that a single grammatical system or single set of construction types may relate to a variety of semantic distinctions. For example, the four noun classes in Dyirbal code a dozen cultural contrasts, and the four main types of complement clause in English represent differences of meaning across a score of semantic types (§1.9). Under (f) in §1.10, attention was drawn to the fact that in languages such as Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit a single morphological system covers the marking of two different kinds of syntactic function—the function of an NP within a clause (these markers are appropriately called cases) and the function of an NP within another NP (for instance, genitive, which should then not be called a case).
A similar situation can occur with verbal affixes. In Dyirbal, for example, there is a single inflectional system on verbs which includes positive and nega- tive imperative suffixes (mood), future and present/past suffixes (tense within declarative mood), purposive suffix (clause linking), and a suffix marking the verb in a relative clause. Thus, one system includes information about mood, polarity, tense, and subordinate clause type. This does not imply that relative clause marking is a type of mood, nor that purposive is a kind of tense, etc.
Other languages have an inflectional system which includes marking of mood and modality. (This helps to explain why mood and modality are
3.2 the clause 97 sometimes confused). And there can be a grammatical system some of whose terms mark mood while others indicate a kind of subordinate clause, such as conditional (‘if ’). From this it has sometimes been inferred that conditional is a kind of mood; however, inferences of this kind do not provide a fruitful avenue of analysis.
In Latin, what is called subjunctive is marked in a similar way to moods and has, as a result, been called a mood—on the mistaken principle that everything in a given morphological system must have the same syntactic status. The central meaning of subjunctive in Latin is to mark a type of subordinate clause; for example, veni¯as,2nd person singular present subjunctive of ‘come’ in Imper¯o ut veni¯as ‘I command you to come’. However, a clause with its verb inflected as subjunctive can, effectively, function as a main clause, often glossed ‘let’s —’. There are a number of possible analyses of this. One is to say that subjunctive has two functions, one marking a kind of subordinate clause and the other marking a special type of imperative (often called ‘jussive’ or ‘hortative’). This illustrates that the divisions within a grammar are seldom neat and tidy, and that one morphological form may have several roles in the syntax of a language.
We need now to enquire about the interaction between pragmatic function and syntactic function.