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Needless to say, the only and true cause of the multiplicity of opinion in question lies in the complexity of
the category as such, made especially peculiar by the contrast of its meaningful intricacy against the scarcity of
the English word inflexion. But, stressing the disputability of so many theoretical points connected with the
English mood, the scholars are sometimes apt to forget the positive results already achieved in this domain
during scores of years of both textual researches and the controversies accompanying them.
We must always remember that the knowledge of verbal structure, the understanding of its working in the
construction of speech utterances have been tellingly deepened by the studies of the mood system within the
general framework of modern grammatical theories, especially by the extensive investigations undertaken by
scholars in the past three decades. The main contributions made in this field concern the more and more
precise statement of the significance of the functional plane of any category; the exposition of the subtle
paradigmatic correlations that, working on the same unchangeable verbal basis, acquire the status of
changeable forms; the demonstration of the sentence-constructional value of the verb and its mood, the
meaningful destination of it being realized at the level of the syntactic predicative unit as a whole. Among the
scholars we are indebted to for this knowledge and understanding, to be named in the first place is A.I.
Smirnitsky, whose theories revolutionized the presentation of English verbal grammar; then .A. Ilyish, a
linguist who skilfully demonstrated the strong and weak points of the possible approaches to the general
problem of mood; then G.N. Vorontsova, L.S. Barkhudarov, I.B. Khlebnikova, and a number of others, whose
keen observations and theoretical generalizations, throwing a new light on the analysed phenomena and
discussed problems, at the same time serve as an incentive to further investigations in this interesting sphere of
language study. It is due to the materials gathered and results obtained by these scholars that we venture the
present, of necessity schematic, outline of the category under analysis.
§ 2. The category of mood expresses the character of connection between the process denoted by the verb
and the actual reality, either presenting the process as a fact that really happened, happens or will happen, or
treating it as an imaginary phenomenon, i.e. the subject of a hypothesis, speculation, desire. It follows from this
that the functional opposition underlying the category as a whole is constituted by the forms of oblique mood
meaning, i.e. those of unreality, contrasted against the forms of direct mood meaning, i.e. those of reality, the
former making up the strong member, the latter, the weak member of the opposition. What is, though, the
formal sign of this categorial opposition? What kind of morphological change makes up the material basis of
the functional semantics of the oppositional contrast of forms? The answer to this question, evidently, can be
obtained as a result of an observation of the relevant language data in the light of the two correlated
presentations of the category, namely, a formal presentation and a functional presentation.
But before going into details of fact, we must emphasize, that the most general principle of the
interpretation of the category of mood within the framework of the two approaches is essentially the same; it is
the statement of the semantic content of the category as determining the reality factor of the verbal action, i.e.
showing whether the denoted action is real or unreal
In this respect, it should be clear that the category of mood, like the category of voice, differs in principle
from the immanent verbal categories of time, prospect, development, and retrospective coordination. Indeed,
while the enumerated categories characterize the action from the point of view of its various inherent
properties, the category of mood expresses the outer interpretation of the action as a whole, namely, the
speaker's introduction of it as actual or imaginary. Together with the category of voice, this category, not
reconstructing the process by way of reflecting its constituent qualities, gives an integrating appraisal of the
process and establishes its lingual representation in a syntactic context.
§ 3. The formal description of the category has its source in the traditional school grammar. It is through the
observation of immediate differences in changeable forms that the mood distinctions of the verb were indicated
by the forefathers of modern sophisticated descriptions of the English grammatical structure. These differences,
similar to the categorial forms of person, number, and time, are most clearly pronounced with the unique verb
be.
Namely, it is first and foremost with the verb be that the pure infinitive stem in the construction of the verbal
form of desired or hypothetical action is made prominent. "Be it as you wish", "So be it", "Be what may", "The
powers that be", "The insistence that the accused be present"- such and like constructions, though characterized
by a certain bookish flavour, bear indisputable testimony to the fact that the verb be has a special finite oblique
mood form, different from the direct indicative. Together with the isolated, notional be, as well as the linking
be, in the capacity of the same mood form come also the passive manifestations of verbs with be in a morpho-
logically bound position, Cf.:
The stipulation that the deal be made without delay, the demand that the matter be examined carefully, etc,
By way of correlation with the oblique be, the infinitive stem of the other verbs is clearly seen as