IN THE MOOD
Part the First

by James Lincoln Warren

I’m not in a bad mood. But when I worked for Barnes & Noble, the manager used to drive me around the bend when she would speak thus:

CUSTOMER: Where is the cookbook section?
MANAGER: That would be on the second floor, to the left of the escalator.

“Would be”? What’s wrong with “is”? The manager was using the wrong mood in an effort to sound sophisticated. Wrong mood? What, she was depressed? No, she was in perfectly good spirits as well. What the hell am I talking about, then?

My second love: grammar.

As Fowler says on the entry MOOD in his indispensable A Dictionary of Modern English Usage: “It may save misconceptions to mention that the grammar word has nothing to do with the native word meaning frame of mind &c., & is merely a variant of mode.”

In fact, sometimes grammarians use the term “modality” instead of “mood”, supposing there is less ambiguity. (See Quirk below.) We’ll stick with the tried and true, ourselves, but bear in mind that the adjectival form of “mood” in the grammatical sense is modal and not moody.

Here some definitions of mood:

A grammatical category which expresses the degree or kind of reality of a proposition, as perceived by the speaker.

—R. L. Trask , A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics

Any one of the several groups of forms in the conjugation of a verb which serve to indicate the function in which the verb is used, i.e. whether it expresses a predication,1 a command, a wish, or the like; that quality of a verb which depends on the question to which of these groups its form belongs.

—Oxford English Dictionary

Moods are the changes in the form of the verb to show the various ways in which the action or state is thought of by the speaker … Mood is a grammatical form denoting the style or manner of predication.

—George O. Curme, A Grammar of the English Language

Like other terms used in analysing meaning in the complex verb phrase, such as mood and aspect, MODALITY has been used in various senses. At its most general, modality may be defined as the manner in which the meaning of a clause is qualified so as to reflect the speaker’s judgment of the likelihood of the proposition it expresses being true.

—Randolph Quirk et al, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language

Well, that’s a lot of help, ain’t it? And what’s the point?

Mood can be very subtle. When you use a particular mood, it fundamentally affects the meaning of the phrase. In dialogue, it says a lot about the person speaking. But before we get into that, let’s look at it from a strictly grammatical point of view. I’ll go into its idiomatic uses next week.

In English, there are three recognized moods, the indicative, the subjunctive2, and the imperative. We can forget about the imperative, since there’s nothing confusing about it—it’s how you give orders or commands, and is sometimes accompanied by the modal auxiliary verb “let”, as in “Men, let’s take that hill!” or “Let them eat cake!”

No, the trouble is all between the indicative and the subjunctive. One is supposed to be actual (indicative) and the other speculative (subjunctive). Oh, if it were only that simple! (Note the use of the were-subjunctive here.)

Basically, what it comes down to is this:

The indicative mood is making a statement of something as though it were fact:

“The truck collided with the light pole.”

The subjunctive mood is making a statement about something that only has the potential for reality:

“The truck might have collided with the light pole.”

Subjunctive is not quite the same thing as conditional, i.e., involving an “if” statement, because although conditionals can certainly be in the subjunctive mood, they are just as much at home in the indicative or imperative:

“If Johnson gets open, you should throw the ball to him.” (subjunctive)

“If Johnson gets open, you are throwing the ball to him.” (indicative)

“If Johnson gets open, throw the ball to him.” (imperative)

In English, subjunctives can usually be expressed one of three ways: through the use of the subjunctive “be” (“If that be so …”), through the use of a modal auxiliary verb (can, will, shall, may, must, might, could, would, should, ought), and through the use of the were-subjunctive (“If I were a rich man … ”).

Quirk divides the subjunctive into two forms, the mandative and the formulaic. The mandative is the more common and frequently contains a “that” clause:

“It may rain later.”

“It is unlikely that he could drive without his glasses.”

The formulaic is an expression of will:

“I should be getting home.”

“If I were you, I’d think about it.”

Curme talks about two kinds of subjunctive as well, which he calls the optative and the potential. Curme’s optative is the same as Quirk’s formulaic, and the potential the same as the mandative. (I think Quirk avoided the older term “optative” to avoid ambiguity—in ancient Greek, “optative” is a separate mood from the subjunctive, one which is more remote in time and likelihood than the subjunctive itself.)

All right, it’s a little confusing, but it’s not really all that complicated, right? What’s the trouble?

Well … unfortunately (but very interestingly), it is all that complicated. Idiomatically, you may use one mood in talking to your buddy but another in talking to your boss. And the tenses start to act a little weird. But that’s for next week.

1. Predication is nothing more than making a statement. [↩]
2. Etymologically, “subjunctive” means “subjoined”, i.e., that which is dependent on something else for its existence. [↩]