How an action of a sentence is carried in a sentence is called mood. Look at the following examples:
- He loves reading books.
- Love others.
- If you love people, people will love you.
In the above examples, the same verb ‘love’ has been used in
different ways: as a statement, command, and condition.
Look at the diagram below to understand the classification of mood:
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| Arup Roy, Lecturer in English Language & Literature, Kanchkura University College, Uttarkhan, Airport, Dhaka |
Indicative mood
Indicative mood describes any event or makes any question.
So, indicative mood deals with description and question.
Description: He is happy. I play football. She watches
movies. Here each describes its respective event.
Question: Are you playing cricket? Do you watch movies?
Imperative Mood
The imperative mood gives command or advice. It demands action be performed. The imperative mood does have a past or future form. It is
only available in the present tense and in the second person. The imperative mood is
appropriate and powerful when you want to give commands or instructions.
- Go
straight and turn left.
- Do
not tell a lie.
Ø Work
seriously.
However, bare imperative may not be suitable for other
types of documents such as recommendations, letters procedures, etc. In those
situations, you can use some polite words such as please, kindly, etc.
Ø Please
take a pill every alternative day.
Ø Kindly tell us your problem.
Subjunctive Mood
Examples:
I wish I were a king!
(As the sentence talks about a hypothetical situation, "was" has been transformed into "were".
Were I a king!
(Since it is a hypothetical sentence, you are to transform 'was' into 'were'.
It is imperative that he begin now.
The sentence expresses a demand and so 'begins' becomes 'begin'.
I propose she do it.
As a suggestion lies in the sentence, you have to replace 'does' with ' do'.
I demand he be absent
As the sentence expresses a demand, you need to reverse the normal order of the verb: 'do' instead of does.
In subjunctive mood, you need to reverse the normal order of subject-verb agreement.
Normal form: am, is, are
Example: He is happy.
Subjunctive form: be
I demand that he be happy.
Normal form: has
Subjunctive form: have
I demand she have priority.
Normal form: first-person and third ate followed by 'was' / singular verb
Subjunctive form: were / plural verb
If I were a bird.
I propose she make 'biriyani'.
So, from the above discussion, we can see that in the subjunctive mood we do not follow normal subject verb relationship.
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