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I. The Introduction to the Category of Mood
The meaning of the category of mood is the attitude of the speaker or writer towards the content of the sentence, whether the speaker considers the action real, unreal, desirable, necessary, etc. It is expressed in the form of the verb [3; 76].
There are three moods in English – the indicative mood, the imperative moodand the oblique moods. The oblique moods are further subdivided into the subjunctive mood, the conditional mood and the suppositional mood [5; 7-8].
The indicative mood shows that the process is real, i.e. that it took place in the past, takes place in the present, or will take place in the future, e.g.: She helped me; She helps me; She will help me. So it may denote actions with different time-reference and different aspective characteristics. Therefore, the indicative mood has a wide variety of tense and aspect forms in the active and passive voice [3; 76].
The imperative moodexpresses a command or a request to perform an action addressed to somebody, but not the action itself, that is why it has no tense category; the unfulfilled action always refers to the future. The imperative mood form coincides with the plain stem of the verb, for example: Open the window! Do open the window! (the auxiliary do makes the sentence more emphatic). The negative form is built by means of the auxiliary do + the negative particle not, for example: Don’t go away. In commands and requests addressed to a first or third person the analytical form let + the personal pronoun in the objective case + (not) + bare infinitiveis used. For example: Let us have dinner together. Let him finish his task. Let her not go any further. In the form let me (let me do it) the first person singular does not convey any imperative meaning and should not therefore be regarded as the imperative. It conveys the meaning of I am eager to do it [3; 76].
The oblique moods in English describe the action which the speaker considers unreal, desirable, hypothetically possible, problematic, etc. [5; 7]. For example: I wish you were here. Heaven forbid! Suppose you got lost in this city, what would you do? If I had met him then, I would have apologized. Formally speaking, all the Oblique Moods can be classified in the following way:
§ Subjunctive I (the Present subjunctive)– a synthetic form coinciding with bare infinitive: Long livethe king!, She insisted that he be present [12; 81].
§ Subjunctive II (the Past subjunctive)– a synthetic form coinciding with the Past Indefinite if no priority is implied, and an analytical form coinciding with the Past Perfect if priority is implied: If he were free now… and If he had been here yesterday…. Mind the usage of “were” in all persons [12; 81].
§ The Conditional Mood – an analytical form used in the principal clause while Subjunctive II is used in the subordinate clause. It consists of “shall/will” + any form of the infinitive if the action refers to the future, “should/would” + non-perfect infinitive when the action is referred to the present, and perfect infinitive when the action is referred to the past (…he’ll help/… he’d help us now/ … he’d have helped us then).
§ The Suppositional Mood – an analytical form, consisting of “should” in all persons + non-perfect infinitive. It is generally used after “demand”, “suggest”, “it’s necessary”, etc.: He insisted that we should join him. If the priority is implied, perfect infinitive should be used: He suggested that we should have finished the work by the time of the chief’s arrival.