In linguistics, irrealis moods (abbreviated ) are the main set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened at the moment the speaker is talking. This contrasts with the realis moods. They are used in statements without truth value (imperative, interrogative, subordinate, etc).
Every language has grammatical ways of expressing unreality. Linguists tend to reserve the term "irrealis" for particular morphological markers or clause types. Many languages with irrealis mood make further subdivisions between kinds of irrealis moods. This is especially so among Algonquian languages such as Blackfoot.
List of irrealis moods
Mood Event, as intended by speaker Example Found in Subjunctive ( or ) Event is considered unlikely (mainly used in dependent clauses). "If I were to love you..." Conditional () Event depends upon another condition. "I would love you" Optative () Event is hoped, expected, or awaited. "May I be loved!" Jussive () Event is pleaded, implored or asked. "Everyone should be loved" Potential () Event is probable or considered likely "She probably loves me" Imperative ()Prohibitive () Event is directly ordered or requested by the speaker.Event is directly prohibited by the speaker. "Love me!""Do not love me" Desiderative ( or ) Event is desired/wished by a participant in the state of affairs referred to in the utterance "I wish he loved me." Dubitative () Event is uncertain, doubtful, dubious. "She seems to love me." Hypothetical () Event is hypothetical, or it is counterfactual, but possible. "I might love you [if...]" Presumptive () Event is assumed, presupposed by the speaker. "Knowing the way you love me [...]" Permissive () Event is permitted by the speaker. "You may [not] love me..." Mirative ()Admirative Event is surprising or amazing (literally or in irony or sarcasm). "Wow! They love me!", "Apparently they love me." Hortative () Event is exhorted, implored, insisted or encouraged by speaker. "Let us love!" () Event is likely but depends upon a condition; a combination of the potential and conditional. "I would probably love you [if...]" () Event is requested by the speaker. "Will you love me?" Mongolian Volitive () Event is desired, wished or feared by the speaker. "Would that you loved me!" / "God forbid [that] you love me!" Japanese Inferential ( or ) Event is not witnessed and not confirmed. "Something tells me she loves me." Necessitative () Event is necessary, or it is both desired and encouraged; a combination of the hortative and jussive. "It is necessary that you should love me." Interrogative () Event is asked or questioned by the speaker "Does he love me?" Benedictive () Event is requested or wished by the speaker in a polite or honorific fashion. "Would you please be so kind as to love me?" () Event is presupposed or admitted as part of a refutation. "Even if she loves me [...]";"Although she loves me [...]" () Event is prescribed by the speaker (though not demanded), but with the expectation that it will occur. "Please [do not] love me.";"Go ahead, love me." Mongolian () () () Event is warned against happening. "Beware loving me."
Moods
Subjunctive
The subjunctive mood, sometimes called conjunctive mood, has several uses in dependent clauses. Examples include discussing hypothetical or unlikely events, expressing opinions or emotions, or making polite requests (the exact scope is language-specific). A subjunctive mood exists in English, but it often is not obligatory. Example: "I suggested that Paul an apple", Paul is not in fact eating an apple. Contrast this with the sentence "Paul an apple", where the verb "to eat" is in the present tense, indicative mood. Another way, especially in British English, of expressing this might be "I suggested that Paul an apple", derived from "Paul should eat an apple."
Other uses of the subjunctive in English, as in "And not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his trespass..." (KJV Leviticus 5:7), have become archaic or formal.Anita Mittwoch, Rodney Huddleston and Peter Collins. "The clause: Adjuncts." Pp. 745. Chapter 8 of . Statements such as "I shall ensure that immediately" often are formal, and often have been supplanted by constructions with the indicative, such as "I'll make sure [that] immediately". (In other situations, the verb form for subjunctive and indicative may be identical: "I'll make sure [that] immediately.)
The subjunctive mood figures prominently in the grammar of the Romance languages, which require this mood for certain types of dependent clauses. This point commonly causes difficulty for English speakers learning these languages.
In certain other languages, the dubitative or the conditional moods may be employed instead of the subjunctive in referring to doubtful or unlikely events (see the main article).
Conditional
The conditional mood (abbreviated ) is used to speak of an event whose realization is dependent upon another condition, particularly, but not exclusively, in conditional sentences. In other languages, such as Spanish or French, verbs have a specific conditional inflection. This applies also to some verbs in German, in which the conditional mood is conventionally called , differing from . In Modern English, it is a periphrastic construction, with the form would + infinitive, e.g., I would buy. Thus, the conditional version of "John eats if he is hungry" is:
English: John would eat if he were hungry
or:
Norwegian Norwegian
In the Romance languages, the conditional form is used primarily in the apodosis (main clause) of conditional clauses, and in a few set phrases where it expresses courtesy or doubt. The main verb in the protasis (dependent clause) is either in the subjunctive or in the indicative mood. However, this is not a universal trait: among others, in German (as above) and in Finnish the conditional mood is used in both the apodosis and the protasis.
A further example of Finnish conditional is the sentence "I would buy a house if I earned a lot of money", where in Finnish both clauses have the conditional marker : , just like in Hungarian, which uses the marker : . In Polish, the conditional marker also appears twice: . Because English is used as a lingua franca, a similar kind of doubling of the word 'would' is a fairly common way to misuse an English language construction.
In French, while the standard language requires the indicative in the dependent clause, using the conditional mood in both clauses is used by some speakers: ("If I would have known, I wouldn't have come") instead of ("If I had known, I wouldn't have come"). However, this usage is considered incorrect and heavily stigmatized. By contrast, is considered correct. In the literary language, past unreal conditional sentences as above may take the pluperfect subjunctive in one clause or both, so that the following sentences are all valid and have the same meaning as the preceding example: ; ; .
Optative
The optative mood expresses hopes, wishes or commands. Other uses may overlap with the subjunctive mood. Few languages have an optative as a distinct mood; some that do are Albanian, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Finnish, Avestan (it was also present in Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of the aforementioned languages except for Finnish).
In Finnish, the mood may be called an "archaic" or "formal imperative", even if it has other uses; nevertheless, it at least expresses formality. For example, the ninth Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins with:
where "shall not be arrested" is the imperative of "is not arrested". Also, using the conditional mood in conjunction with the clitic yields an optative meaning: "if only I were". Here, it is evident that the wish has not been fulfilled and probably will not be.
In Sanskrit, the optative is formed by adding the secondary endings to the verb stem. The optative, as other moods, is found in active voice and middle voice. Examples: "may you bear" (active) and "may you bear [for yourself]" (middle). The optative may not only express wishes, requests and commands, but also possibilities, e.g., "he might perhaps wake up due to the bellowing of cows",Gonda, J., 1966. A concise elementary grammar of the Sanskrit language with exercises, reading selections, and a glossary. Leiden, E.J. Brill. doubt and uncertainty, e.g., "how would I be able to recognize Nala?" The optative may further be used instead of a conditional mood.
Jussive
The jussive mood (abbreviated ) expresses plea, insistence, imploring, self-encouragement, wish, desire, intent, command, purpose or consequence. In some languages, this is distinguished from the cohortative mood in that the cohortative occurs in the first person and the jussive in the second or third. It is found in Arabic, where it is called the (), and also in Hebrew and in the constructed language Esperanto. The rules governing the jussive in Arabic are somewhat complex.
Potential The potential mood (abbreviated ) is a mood of probability indicating that, in the opinion of the speaker, the action or occurrence is considered likely. It is used in many languages, including in Finnish,Clemens Niemi, A Finnish Grammar (1917), p. 27. Japanese,Tatui Baba, An Elementary Grammar of the Japanese Language (1888), p. 18. and Sanskrit (as well as its ancestor Proto-Indo-European),Ratnakar Narale, Sanskrit for English Speaking People (2004), p. 332. and in the Sami languages. (In Japanese it is often called something like tentative, since potential is used to refer to a voice indicating capability to perform the action.)
In Finnish, it is mostly a literary device, as it has virtually disappeared from daily spoken language in most dialects. Its suffix is , as in *men + ne + e → "(s/he/it) will probably go". Some kinds of consonant clusters simplify to geminates. In spoken language, the word "probably" is used instead, e.g., "he probably comes", instead of .
Imperative
The imperative mood expresses direct commands, requests, and prohibitions. In many circumstances, using the imperative mood may sound blunt or even rude, so it is often used with care. Example: "Paul, do your homework now". An imperative is used to tell someone to do something without argument.
Many languages, including English, use the bare verb stem to form the imperative (such as "go", "run", "do"). Other languages, such as Seri and Latin, however, use special imperative forms.
In English, second person is implied by the imperative except when first-person plural is specified, as in "Let's go" ("Let us go").
The prohibitive mood, the negative imperative may be grammatically or morphologically different from the imperative mood in some languages. It indicates that the action of the verb is not permitted, e.g., "Do not go!" (archaically, "Go not!"). In Portuguese and Spanish, for example, the forms of the imperative are only used for the imperative itself, e.g., "" "" ("leave!"), whereas the subjunctive is used to form negative commands, e.g., "" "" ("don't leave!").
In English, the imperative is sometimes used to form a conditional sentence: e.g., "Go eastward a mile, and you will see it" means "If you go eastward a mile, you will see it".
Desiderative
Whereas the optative expresses hopes, the desiderative mood expresses wishes and desires. Desires are what we want to be the case; hope generally implies optimism toward the chances of a desire's fulfillment. If someone desires something but is pessimistic about its chances of occurring, then one desires it but does not hope for it. Few languages have a distinct desiderative mood; three that do are Sanskrit, Japanese, and Proto-Indo-European.