Transcript MOOD - Gordon State College

TENSE and MOOD
Mood & tense are two TOTALLY different
grammatical aspects.
“Tense” means time:
Present – I study a lot.
Past – I studied yesterday
Future – I will study tomorrow.
Mood has absolutely NOTHING to do with time. There are 3 different
moods in both English & Spanish: indicative, subjunctive, imperative. So
there are 3 ways to use the present tense—1 in the indicative, 1 in the
subjunctive, 1 in the imperative.
Indicative is the default mood in both languages. That is, if you have no
reason to use the subjunctive or imperative, you use the indicative.
Every verb on this page is in the indicative mood.
Imperative is easy: it’s commands. In English, it’s easy to identify, because
there’s always an understood “you”: Read this book! Eat your veggies!
Subjunctive: this is the tough one. We don’t use it much in English at all.
We use it when we want someone to get something done:
I move that the meeting be adjourned. *** I suggest that he eat his veggies.
You can tell that these verbs are subjunctive, because we don’t normally
say, “The meeting be adjourned” or “He eat his veggies.” Another way
we use it is when we use contrary-to-fact clauses:
I wouldn’t do that if I were you (but I’m not).
We’d leave if it were raining (but it’s not).
Look at the subjunctive examples from the previous
slide:
I move that the meeting be adjourned.
I suggest that he eat his veggies.
I wouldn’t do that if I were you (but I’m not).
We’d leave if it were raining (but it’s not).
Note that the first 2 are in the present TENSE. The
second 2 are in the past TENSE. But both are the
subjunctive MOOD.
You may not even say “if I were you.” A lot of
people don’t do that now. In Spanish, however,
the subjunctive is used a LOT.
For English, the big thing for you to understand is that
TENSE & MOOD are entirely different. You can have
the present TENSE in the indicative mood, the
imperative mood, or the subjunctive mood. You can
have the subjunctive MOOD in the present tense or the
past tense. TENSE is pretty straightforward, since it’s
about time. MOOD is a little bit more complicated,
since there are specific reasons for its use.
The good news is that there really isn’t much of a reason
to teach the subjunctive in English. We don’t use it
much. We do use the imperative (commands), but
that’s not something native speakers of English use
incorrectly. The big thing for English majors is
understanding that TENSE & MOOD are totally
different.
The next set of slides (link below) is about form,
voice, person, & number. All verbs can be
identified in six ways—tense, mood, form,
voice, person, & number. This is true in
English & Spanish.
Form, Voice, Person, Number