Imperatives, Modals and Conditionals

Chapter 4 introduced verb forms in English, and Chapter 5 focused on the tense-aspect system, with a brief introduction to voice.  This chapter continues the discussion of verb forms in English, turning to the feature referred to as mood.  We have already met the issue of mood in the discussion of sentence types; we noted that end point punctuation reflects a speaker’s intonation, but what we didn’t raise directly is that the intonation pattern itself reflects the speaker’s attitude towards the content of the utterance.  Mood refers to the ways a speaker’s attitude is encoded into language.  In English, a mood can carry across an entire sentence, as it does in sentence intonation patterns.

Mood in Sentence Types

Activity 7.1: Identifying Moods

Read each sentence and then write how you think the speaker feels about the content/information in each utterance. 

Fill in the text box with your answer. Click and hold the Check button to see a preferred answer.

As discussed earlier, declarative sentences generally reflect a speaker’s sense of certainty of fact, which is encoded through an intonation pattern of downward pitch across the entire sentence and a written sentence ending with a period.  A feeling of uncertainty or absence of fact, as when asking for information, is indicated by an intonation pattern that rises across the sentence and is encoded in writing with a question mark—an inverted subject-auxiliary word order also contributes to show the speaker is seeking information.  A feeling of high emotion is conveyed through higher pitch and volume of the stressed elements of the words in a sentence and is shown in writing with an exclamation point—a transformed word order may also be used to create focus on the elements that cause the high emotion.  Sentences 1, 2, and 3 above represent a review of this earlier discussion.

Languages have other ways to encode a speaker’s attitude, too, however.  Sentences 4, 5, and 6 introduce some of the alternative ways English uses.  A speaker can insert an adverb into the sentence, such as the word probably in 4, or another adverb like certainly, possibly, and so on.

Mood can also be encoded into the verb form itself, as it is in sentences 5 and 6.  Again, the speaker’s level of certainty plays a large role in some of the verb forms.  While a declarative sentence generally indicates a sense of certainty, that level can be strengthened or hedged through the use of modal auxiliaries, as in sentence 6, to create a multitiered system of certainty, rather than a simple presence of certainty or lack thereof.  Modals are also used to reflect a speaker’s sense of the level of social obligation, which can relate to the social status of speaker to listener.

But certainty or social relationships and obligations aren’t the only senses that a speaker might hold towards an event.  A speaker might also consider the reality level, deeming an event as very much within the realm of reality, carrying factual status.  Alternatively, a speaker might believe that an event is not real but is a hypothetical consideration or fantastical in nature.  To encode these feelings, English again turns to the use of modals, but additionally includes the rare use of subjunctive verb forms.  Among the types of sentences that make the distinction between the real and the unreal are conditional sentences.  Conditional sentences are those that take the if-then form, as in example 5 above.

Indicative, Interrogative, and Imperative Mood

The terms indicative, interrogative, and imperative might be familiar to those who have studied traditional grammar.  We can consider the basic verb forms to have mood, since they do attach to levels of certainty that the speaker carries.  The indicative refers to the verb mood of the twelve basic tenses as they are used in declarative sentences or statements.  The interrogative refers to the verb mood as used in questions, which may also be called interrogative sentences.  The term imperative refers to the verb mood of a unique verb form in sentences that are often defined as those that give a command.

Defining an imperative as a sentence that gives a command is a quick reference definition, for in reality, speakers of English use this form to perform many social interactions.  How might you explain each use of the imperative in the sentences below?

Activity 7.2: Explaining Imperatives

Read each sentence and then write what you think the speaker is really trying to communicate with each imperative sentence below. 

Fill in the text box with your answer. Click and hold the Check button to see a preferred answer.

Now look closely at the structure of an imperative sentence.  What do you notice about it?

Fill in the text box with your answer. Click and hold the Check button to see the preferred answer.

Imperatives, Modals and Conditionals - Page 2