The category of mood and modality
54. Modality. Means of expressing modality.The category of modality is one of the most complicated linguistic categories which has various forms of its expression in the language. It has also a lot of various definitions & interpretations. In the Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary modality is defined as a functional-semantic category which expresses different types of relations between the utterance and reality as well as dif. types of subjective evaluation (оценка) of the information contained in the utterance. Modality expresses 2 types of relations and includes 2 levels. That’s why the linguists usually differentiate between 2 types of modality: objective (or primary) and subjective (or secondary).Ch. Bally considered that each utterance consists of two parts, the part which presents information ( he called it 'dictum') and the part which presents the speaker's evaluation of this information (he called it 'modus'). The primary modality expresses the relation of the contents of the sentence to reality as established by the speaker who, choosing the appropriate form of the mood presents the event as real, unreal or desirable. It is expressed by the grammatical form of mood and thus it is a component of predicativity and as such it always finds a grammatical expression in the sentence. E.g. You are my wife. Be my wife. I wish you were my wife. Thus, primary modality as a component of predicativity is an obligatory feature of the sentence - we cannot make a sentence without expressing primary modality. Secondary modality presents another layer of modality, built over the primary modality. It' does not always find an explicit expression in the sentence. Secondary modality is not homogeneous. It contains two layers and we can differentiate between two types of secondary modality. The first type expresses the relations between the subject of the sentence and the action. The action may be presented as possible, permissive, obligatory, necessary, desirable or unnecessary for the subject. It is expressed by the modal verbs in their verb-oriented meanings: ability, possibility, permission, necessity, obligation etc. E.g. Children must be seen but not heard. I can jump puddles. You may be free for today. The second type of secondary modality expresses the attitude of the speaker to the contents of the utterance or the speaker's evaluation of the event presented in the utterance. This type of modality can be expressed by: 1)modal words and modal adverbs and modal particles: maybe, probably, certainly, of course, perhaps, sure, evidently, supposedly, luckily, fortunately etc. ( E.g. This is probably the best chance you have ever had); 2) by modal verbs in their sentence-oriented meanings: probability, doubt, supposition, certainty, disbelief (E.g. She couldn't have done it alone) ;3) by modalized verbs seem, to appear, happen, chance (She appeared to be holding something back from him); 4) by the so called performative verbs and phrases which name speech and mental acts: think, suppose, guess, doubt, be certain, be sure etc. (e.g. I guess you are right; I am afraid this is true); 5) by special syntactic structures like 'tag questions' (This is true, isn't it?), as well as 6) by intonation and word order. As we can see the modal verbs participate in the expression of two kinds of secondary modality.
The number of moods in Modern English. The grammatical category of mood has the reputation of being one of the most controversial categories. Mood is traditionally defined as a grammatical category which expresses the relation of the action to reality as stated by the speaker. As follows from the definition mood seems to be the only morphological category which includes the category of the speaker in its definition. It means that it is one of the most speaker-oriented categories. The forms of the moods serve the needs of the speaker to present the action as real, unreal (contradicting the state of things in reality) or hypothetical. The category of mood presents the interpretation of the action by the speaker from the point of view of its relation to reality. Scholars differ greatly in the understanding of this category, its scope and, consequently, in the number of grammatical forms of the mood they find in English. This number- varies from two (in Barkhudarov's interpretation) to sixteeen (in Deutchbein's interpretation). In our interpretation and classification of moods we shall follow the classification system of moods presented by Smirnitsky. It appears to be the most consistent because it is meaning-oriented and it also takes into consideration the difference between an analytical form and a free syntactic combination. His system of moods includes six moods: the Indicative, the Imperative, Subjunctive I, Subjunctive II, the Conditional Mood and the Suppositional mood. The Indicative mood presents the action as real from the speaker's point of view. It is the most frequently used type of mood and it has the greatest number of forms. The forms of the Indicative mood are used in two communicative types of sentences: declarative and interrogative. Suppositional mood specializes in the expression of hypothetical actions. The comparison of such sentences as "If he turns up tell him to -wait for me" and "Should he turn up tell him to wait for me" shows that both the verbal forms present the action as hypothetical but differ in the degree of certainty which is higher in the case of Present Indefinite Indicative. The Imperative mood is used to express inducement(побуждение, стимул) to action, which means that the speaker considers the action as desirable. The use of the Imperative mood is restricted to only one communicative type of sentences - imperative sentences. The Conditional mood is built with the help of the auxiliary verbs should/would and the Infinitive of the notional verb. As in the case of Subjunctive II, the non-perfect and perfect forms of the Infinitive have a temporal meaning rather than the meaning of priority. The Conditional mood expresses an unreal action which is the consequence of an unreal condition.