Language Decoded – Verbs: Moods, Voices, Tenses & Aspects
Verbs are the central element of a sentence. Most communicative elements are sentences. Except while identifying things or calling out to people, all other communication is done with sentences or simply verbs.
A verb is like a pivot of a sentence, as is evident from previous articles on Nouns and Cases. A verb will determine what is the central action and thereby the central theme of the sentence, it establishes the relationship of all nouns in the sentence, and it also conveys the time zone (past, present, or future) and “mood” or “mode” of a sentence.
(“Mood” here is a technical term – not referring to an emotional state but a manner in which a sentence expresses reality, imagination or instruction.)
The next few paragraphs will decipher the meanings of these technical terms.
Moods
| Indicative | The statement of reality, as is, was or will be. Most language is expressed in this mood. Simply said – it is the use of language for describing and stating facts in day-to-day life. As simple as, I am hungry. Or what is for dinner today. Shall we go to the mall today? Here, there is a general reference to reality. The reader might not appreciate or fully comprehend this until one reads the section on the subjunctive mood and observes the difference. |
| Subjunctive | This, on the contrary, is an expression of how things might have been, or one wishes to be. This expression does not exist in reality, just like the phrase above in red suggests. What we could have eaten differently for dinner last night, or what I wish there is for dinner at my friends place tonight, how it would have been had the bomb not gone off or if our friends had not taken that flight – how we wish we had more money, or a better love life, and better children and so on and so forth. |
| Conditional | In some languages, the subjunctive is further divided into two parts. The other one expresses a condition for a wishful situation to arise. Had the person invested in real estate, he would be a rich man today. Had he selected this stock in his portfolio, he would have been a multi-millionaire today. Had India chosen not to partition based on religion, the country would have faced an extended civil war. The former phrases (marked in red) represent the condition and therefore the conditional mood in which the latter situation (marked in blue) or the subjunctive mood would arise. IN most languages there is little or no distinction in the form and structure of the conditional and the subjunctive, but in some languages, it is marked. French, Spanish and perhaps other European languages have distinct conditional and subjunctive moods. |
| Imperative | The imperative, in contrast to the indicative, does not STATE or DESCRIBE reality as it is, but instructs the interlocutor to perform actions. Be a good boy, is different from you ARE a good child. Hand me the gun, is not the same as – he helps me with the gun when I go hunting. While the former has the communicative function of instructing and requesting, the latter examples INDICATES a fact of life. |
Comments
Post a Comment