In both languages the Indicative mood represents an action as a fact: He is here – Он здесь; He said so – Он так сказал.
The Imperative mood expresses the speaker’s inducement (order, request, command, and the like) addressed to another person to do something: Come here – Иди сюда; Wake up – Вставай.
The Subjunctive mood shows actions as non-facts, but the range of meanings proposed includes those which are not modal (unreal condition, unlikely condition, consequence of unreal condition, wish, purpose and the like). Moreover, their means of expression are heterogeneous (synthetic and “analytical”, as well as homonymous), which seems suspect.
Apart from the Fact-Mood and Will-Mood, the Thought-Mood is further subdivided by some linguists. These subdivisions are Subjunctive (be/were), Permissive (may/might/let + infinitive), Tense-Mood (lived, had lived),
Conditional (should/would + infinitive), and Compulsive (be + infinitive). This yields a system of seven moods (Sweet, 1892), which is subjected to criticism just like A. I. Smirnitsky’s system.
Systems comprising two moods have been proposed by M. Y. Blokh (Blokh, 2000) and L. S. Barkhudarov (Barkhudarov, 1975). Let’s now consider each of them in detail.
The category of mood according to M. Y. Blokh expresses the speaker’s interpretation of the situation as actual or imaginary. He distinguishes two moods in Modern English: The Indicative and the Subjunctive, which stand in opposition to each other, thus, forming a unity of the system. The Indicative mood represents an action as actual, while the Subjunctive mood shows it as imaginary.
The Subjunctive mood is further subdivided into spective and conditional moods, which in their turn have further subdivisions. Spective is represented by pure spective (be and imperative) and modal spective (may, let, should + infinitive). Conditional consists of stipulative (were, knew) and consective (had known). For the sake of simplifying the working terminology M. Y. Blokh calls moods, which belong to the Subjunctive, the following names: Subjunctive I (pure spective), Subjunctive II (stipulative), Subjunctive III (consective) and Modal Subjunctive (modal spective). Thus a twofold system turns into fivefold.
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