Conditional mood

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The conditional mood (abbreviated cond) is a grammatical mood used in conditional sentences to express a proposition whose validity is dependent on some condition, possibly counterfactual.

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It may refer to a distinct verb form that expresses the conditional set of circumstances proper in the dependent clause or protasis (e.g. in Turkish or Azerbaijani [lower-alpha 1] ), or which expresses the hypothetical state of affairs or uncertain event contingent to it in the independent clause or apodosis , or both (e.g. in Hungarian or Finnish [lower-alpha 2] ). Some languages distinguish more than one conditional mood; the East African language Hadza, for example, has a potential conditional expressing possibility, and a veridical conditional expressing certainty. Other languages [ which? ] do not have a conditional mood at all [ citation needed ]. In some informal contexts, such as language teaching, it may be called the "conditional tense".

Some languages have verb forms called "conditional" although their use is not exclusive to conditional expression. Examples are the English and French conditionals (an analytic construction in English, [lower-alpha 3] but inflected verb forms in French), which are morphologically futures-in-the-past, [1] and of which each has thus been referred to as a "so-called conditional" [1] [2] (French : soi-disant conditionnel [3] [4] [5] ) in modern and contemporary linguistics (e.g. French je chanterais, from Late Latin cantāre habēbam, in si vous me le permettiez, je chanterais, "if you allowed me to do so, I would sing" [so-called conditional] vs. j'ai dit que je chanterais, "I said that I would sing" [future-in-the-past]). The English would construction may also be used for past habitual action ("When I was young I would happily walk three miles to school every day").

This article describes the formation of the conditional forms of verbs in certain languages. For fuller details of the construction of conditional sentences, see Conditional sentence (and for English specifically, English conditional sentences).

Germanic languages

English

English does not have [lower-alpha 4] an inflective (morphological) conditional mood, except inasmuch as the modal verbs could, might, should and would may in some contexts be regarded as conditional forms of can, may, shall and will respectively. What is called the English conditional mood (or just the conditional) is formed periphrastically using the modal verb would in combination with the bare infinitive of the following verb. (Occasionally should is used in place of would with a first person subject – see shall and will. Also the aforementioned modal verbs could, might and should may replace would in order to express appropriate modality in addition to conditionality.)

English has three types of conditional sentences, [6] which may be described as factual ("conditional 0": "When I feel well, I sing"), predictive ("conditional I": "If I feel well, I shall sing"), and counterfactual ("conditional II" or "conditional III": "If I felt well, I would sing"; "If I had felt well, I would have sung"; or "Were I well (if I were well) I would have sung"). As in many other languages, it is only the counterfactual type that causes the conditional mood to be used.

Conditionality may be expressed in several tense–aspect forms. [7] These are the simple conditional (would sing), the conditional progressive (would be singing), the conditional perfect (would have sung), and conditional perfect progressive (would have been singing). For the uses of these, see Uses of English verb forms. The conditional simple and progressive may also be called the present conditional, while the perfect forms can be called past conditional.

For details of the formation of conditional clauses and sentences in English, see English conditional sentences.

German

In German, the following verbal constructions are sometimes referred to as conditional (German: Konditional):

Ich käme ("I would come")
Ich würde kommen ("I would come")
Ich hätte gesungen ("I had [subjunctive] sung", i.e. "I would have sung")
Sie wären gekommen ("They were [subjunctive] come", i.e. "They would have come")

For more information, see German conjugation.

Dutch

The main conditional construction in Dutch involves the past tense of the verb zullen, the auxiliary of the future tenses, cognate with English shall.

Ik zou zingen 'I would sing', lit. 'I should sing' — referred to as onvoltooid verleden toekomende tijd 'imperfect past future tense'
Ik zou gegaan zijn 'I would have gone', lit. 'I should have gone' — referred to as voltooid verleden toekomende tijd 'perfect past future tense'

The latter tense is sometimes replaced by the past perfect (plusquamperfect).

Ik was gegaan, lit. 'I had gone'

Romance languages

While Latin did not conjugate separately for the conditional (it used Imperfect Subjunctive and Pluperfect Subjunctive for present and perfect conditional respectively), most of the Romance languages developed a conditional paradigm. The evolution of these forms (and of the innovative Romance future tense forms) is a well-known example of grammaticalization, whereby a syntactically and semantically independent word becomes a bound morpheme with a highly reduced semantic function. The Romance conditional (and future) forms are derived from the Latin infinitive followed by a finite form of the verb habēre . This verb originally meant "to have" in Classical Latin, but in Late Latin picked up a grammatical use as a temporal or modal auxiliary. The fixing of word order (infinitive + auxiliary) and the phonological reduction of the inflected forms of habēre eventually led to the fusion of the two elements into a single synthetic form.

In French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and Occitan, the conditional endings come from the imperfect of Latin habēre . For example, in the first person singular:

LanguageExample
Late Latincantāre habēbam
Vulgar Latin*cantar-ea
Old Italiancantarìa
Spanishcantaría
Portuguesecantaria
Catalancantaria
Occitancantariái
Frenchchanterais
Old Frenchchantereie, -eve

A trace of the historical presence of two separate verbs can still be seen in the possibility of mesoclisis in conservative varieties of European Portuguese, where an object pronoun can appear between the verb stem and the conditional ending (e.g. cantá-lo-ia; see Portuguese personal pronouns § Proclisis, enclisis, and mesoclisis).

Italian

Old Italian had originally three different forms of conditional: [10]

Only the Tuscan form survives in modern Italian:

future stem canter- + Old It. preterit abbe '(s)he had' > Old It. canterabbe [11] '(s)he would have sung' > It. canterebbe '(s)he would sing'

The second and third types have slowly disappeared remaining until the 19th century in some poetic composition for metric needs. [10]

Romanian

Romanian uses a periphrastic construction for the conditional, e.g. 1sg , 2sg ai, 3sg/pl ar, 1pl am, 2pl ați + cânta 'sing'. The modal clitic mixes forms of Latin habēre:

Old Romanian, on the other hand, used a periphrastic construction with the imperfect of vrea 'to want' + verb, e.g. vrea cânta 'I would sing', vreai cânta 'you would sing', etc. [13] Until the 17th century, Old Romanian also preserved a synthetic conditional, e.g. cântare 'I would sing', cântarem 'we would sing', and darear 'he would give', retained from either the Latin future perfect or perfect subjunctive (or a mixture of both). [14] Aromanian and Istro-Romanian have maintained the same synthetic conditional:

Portuguese

In Portuguese, the conditional is formed by the imperfect form of habēre affixed to the main verb's infinitive. However, in spoken language, the periphrastic form is also extremely common.

Grammatical personfalar (to speak)comer (to eat)rir (to laugh)
Eu Falaria / Iria falar / Ia falar Comeria / Iria comer / Ia comerRiria / Iria rir / Ia rir
TuFalarias / Irias falar / Ias falar Comerias / Irias comer / Ias comer Ririas / Irias rir / ias rir
Ele/ElaFalaria / Iria falar / Ia falarComeria / Iria comer / Ia comer Riria / Iria rir / Ia rir
NósFalaríamos / Iríamos falar / Íamos falarComeríamos / Iríamos comer / Íamos comerRiríamos / Iríamos rir / Íamos rir
VósFalaríeis / Iríeis falar / Íeis falarComeríeis / Iríeis comer / Íeis comerRiríeis / Iríeis rir / Íeis rir
Eles/ElasFalariam / Iriam falar / Iam falarComeriam / Iriam comer / Iam comer Ririam / Iriam rir / Iam rir

Portuguese conditional is also called past future futuro do pretérito, as it describes both conjectures that would occur given a certain condition and actions that were to take place in the future, from a past perspective. When the conditional has the former purpose, it imperatively comes along with a conditional subordinate clause in the past subjunctive.

The Conditional is also one of the two Portuguese tenses which demand mesoclisis when proclisis is forbidden – since enclisis is always considered ungrammatical.

Spanish

In Spanish the conditional is formed by the infinitive of the verb with a postfix, e.g. -ía, for all verbs. For irregular verbs, the stem is modified.

Grammatical personcomprar (to buy)vender (to sell)dormir (to sleep)tener (to have)Meaning
(yo)compraríavenderíadormiríatendríaI would ...
(tu)compraríasvenderíasdormiríastendríasyou would ...
(él/ella/usted)compraríavenderíadormiríatendríahe/she/You would ...
(nosotros)compraríamosvenderíamosdormiríamostendríamoswe would ...
(vosotros)compraríaisvenderíaisdormiríaistendríaisyou would ...
(ellos/ellas/ustedes)compraríanvenderíandormiríantendríanthey would ...

Slavic languages

Russian

In Russian, the conditional mood is formed by the past tense of the verb with the particle бы by, which usually follows the verb. For example:

This form is sometimes also called the subjunctive mood. For more information on its usage, see Russian verbs.

Polish

Polish forms the conditional mood in a similar way to Russian, using the particle by together with the past tense of the verb. This is an enclitic particle, which often attaches to the first stressed word in the clause, rather than following the verb. It also takes the personal endings (in the first and second persons) which usually attach to the past tense. For example:

The clitic can move after conjunctions, e.g.:

Note that the clitic can not form a single verb with certain conjunctions, nor start the subordinate clause, as it would change the meaning to the subjunctive, [16] e.g.

There is also a past conditional, which also includes the past tense of the copular verb być, as in był(a)bym śpiewał(a) ("I would have sung"), but this is rarely used.

For details see Polish verbs.

Uralic languages

Hungarian

Hungarian uses a marker for expressing the conditional mood. This marker has four forms: -na, -ne, -ná and -né. In the present tense, the marker appears right after the verb stem and just before the affix of the verbal person. For example: I would sit: ül (sit) + ne + k (referring to the person I) = ülnék. (In Hungarian, when a word ends with a vowel, and a suffix or a marker or an affix is added to its end, the vowel becomes long.) When making an if-sentence, the conditional mood is used in both apodosis and the protasis:

In Hungarian, the past tense is expressed with a marker as well, but two verbal markers are never used in sequence. Therefore, the auxiliary verb volna is used for expressing the conditional mood in the past. The word volna is the conditional form of the verb van (be). The marker of past is -t/-tt, and is put exactly the same place as the marker of conditional mood in the present.

Expressing a future action with the conditional mood is exactly the same as the present, although an additional word referring to either a definite or indefinite time in the future is often used: majd (then), holnap (tomorrow), etc.

The conditional mood is often used with potential suffixes attached to the verb stem (-hat/-het), and the two are therefore often confused.

Finnish

In Finnish the conditional mood is used in both the apodosis and the protasis, just like in Hungarian. It uses the conditional marker -isi-:

Notes

  1. E.g. in Azerbaijani, çox pul qazansam, bir ev alaram ("if I earned a lot of money, I would buy a house").
  2. E.g. in Finnish, ostaisin talon, jos ansaitsisin paljon rahaa ("I would buy a house, if I earned a lot of money").
  3. The English conditional sentence uses a past tense form or the subjunctive mood in the protasis and the aforementioned conditional in the apodosis. This is exemplified by the English sentence "If you loved me you would support me" – here the conditional would support appears in the apodosis, while the protasis (the condition clause) uses instead the simple past form loved. Not every conditional sentence, however, involves the conditional mood. For example, in the sentence "If I win, he will be disappointed", the conditional circumstance is expressed using the future marker will.
  4. There is actually one example of inflective conditional mood left from former stages of the English language: "if I were you" instead of "if I would be you" cf. German: "wenn ich du wäre".

Related Research Articles

The subjunctive is a grammatical mood, a feature of the utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude toward it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality such as: wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, obligation, or action that has not yet occurred; the precise situations in which they are used vary from language to language. The subjunctive is one of the irrealis moods, which refer to what is not necessarily real. It is often contrasted with the indicative, a realis mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact.

In grammar, a future tense is a verb form that generally marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. An example of a future tense form is the French aimera, meaning "will love", derived from the verb aimer ("love"). The "future" expressed by the future tense usually means the future relative to the moment of speaking, although in contexts where relative tense is used it may mean the future relative to some other point in time under consideration.

The present tense is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present tense, it is useful to imagine time as a line on which the past tense, the present and the future tense are positioned. The term present tense is usually used in descriptions of specific languages to refer to a particular grammatical form or set of forms; these may have a variety of uses, not all of which will necessarily refer to present time. For example, in the English sentence "My train leaves tomorrow morning", the verb form leaves is said to be in the present tense, even though in this particular context it refers to an event in future time. Similarly, in the historical present, the present tense is used to narrate events that occurred in the past.

Conditional sentences are natural language sentences that express that one thing is contingent on something else, e.g. "If it rains, the picnic will be cancelled." They are so called because the impact of the main clause of the sentence is conditional on the dependent clause. A full conditional thus contains two clauses: a dependent clause called the antecedent, which expresses the condition, and a main clause called the consequent expressing the result.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spanish verbs</span>

Spanish verbs form one of the more complex areas of Spanish grammar. Spanish is a relatively synthetic language with a moderate to high degree of inflection, which shows up mostly in Spanish conjugation.

In Portuguese grammar, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and articles are moderately inflected: there are two genders and two numbers. The case system of the ancestor language, Latin, has been lost, but personal pronouns are still declined with three main types of forms: subject, object of verb, and object of preposition. Most nouns and many adjectives can take diminutive or augmentative derivational suffixes, and most adjectives can take a so-called "superlative" derivational suffix. Adjectives usually follow their respective nouns.

In linguistics, irrealis moods are the main set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened at the moment the speaker is talking. This contrasts with the realis moods.

In French grammar, verbs are a part of speech. Each verb lexeme has a collection of finite and non-finite forms in its conjugation scheme.

The sequence of tenses is a set of grammatical rules of a particular language, governing the agreement between the tenses of verbs in related clauses or sentences.

In linguistics, speech or indirect discourse is a grammatical mechanism for reporting the content of another utterance without directly quoting it. For example, the English sentence Jill said she was coming is indirect discourse while Jill said "I'm coming" would be direct discourse. In fiction, the "utterance" might amount to an unvoiced thought that passes through a stream of consciousness, as reported by an omniscient narrator.

In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used for signaling modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying. The term is also used more broadly to describe the syntactic expression of modality – that is, the use of verb phrases that do not involve inflection of the verb itself.

Tense–aspect–mood or tense–modality–aspect is a group of grammatical categories that are important to understanding spoken or written content, and which are marked in different ways by different languages.

This article discusses the conjugation of verbs in a number of varieties of Catalan, including Old Catalan. Each verbal form is accompanied by its phonetic transcription. Widely used dialectal forms are included, even if they are not considered standard in either of the written norms: those of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans and the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua. Other dialectal forms exist, including those characteristic of minor dialects such as Ribagorçan and Algherese and transitional forms of major dialects.

Portuguese verbs display a high degree of inflection. A typical regular verb has over fifty different forms, expressing up to six different grammatical tenses and three moods. Two forms are peculiar to Portuguese within the Romance languages:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uses of English verb forms</span> Conjugation, finiteness and verb conversion in English grammar

This article describes the uses of various verb forms in modern standard English language. This includes:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English conditional sentences</span>

Prototypical conditional sentences in English are those of the form "If X, then Y". The clause X is referred to as the antecedent, while the clause Y is called the consequent. A conditional is understood as expressing its consequent under the temporary hypothetical assumption of its antecedent.

The main Latin tenses can be divided into two groups: the present system, consisting of the present, future, and imperfect; and the perfect system, consisting of the perfect, future perfect, and pluperfect.

Hindustani verbs conjugate according to mood, tense, person and number. Hindustani inflection is markedly simpler in comparison to Sanskrit, from which Hindustani has inherited its verbal conjugation system. Aspect-marking participles in Hindustani mark the aspect. Gender is not distinct in the present tense of the indicative mood, but all the participle forms agree with the gender and number of the subject. Verbs agree with the gender of the subject or the object depending on whether the subject pronoun is in the dative or ergative case or the nominative case.

Conditional clauses in Latin are clauses which start with the conjunction 'if' or the equivalent. The 'if'-clause in a conditional sentence is known as the protasis, and the consequence is called the apodosis.

Conditional clauses in Ancient Greek are clauses which start with εἰ (ei) "if" or ἐάν (eān) "if ". ἐάν (eān) can be contracted to ἤν (ḗn) or ἄν (ā́n), with a long vowel. The "if"-clause of a conditional sentence is called the protasis, and the consequent or main clause is called the apodosis.

References

  1. 1 2 Comrie, Bernard (1985). Tense. p. 75. ISBN   9780521281386.
  2. Meyer, Paul Georg (2005). Synchronic English Linguistics: An Introduction. ISBN   9783823361916.
  3. Aug. Scheler (1845). Mémoire sur la conjugaison française considérée sous le rapport étymologique. p. 17.
  4. A. Rogge (1874). Étude sur l'emploi qu'on fait en français des temps et des modes dans les phrases hypothétiques.
  5. Fréd. Guillaume Wolper (1874). Étude sur le conditionnel.
  6. Mead, Hayden; Stevenson, Jay (1996), The Essentials of Grammar, New York: Berkley Books, p. 55, ISBN   978-0-425-15446-5, OCLC   35301673
  7. Weisberg, Valerie H. (1986), English Verbs, Every Irregular Conjugation, Van Nuys, California: V.H. Weisberg, p.  108, ISBN   978-0-9610912-5-5, OCLC   13770299
  8. Listen, Paul (2005), The big yellow book of German verbs, Chicago: McGraw-Hill, p.  19, ISBN   978-0-07-146955-5, OCLC   61370368
  9. Listen, Paul (2005), The big yellow book of German verbs, Chicago: McGraw-Hill, p.  28, ISBN   978-0-07-146955-5, OCLC   61370368
  10. 1 2 Linguistica storica dell'italiano, Sarà Macchi https://www.academia.edu/5785033/Linguistica_storica_dellitaliano
  11. James Noel Adams, Social Variation and the Latin Language (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013), 660.
  12. Ti Alkire and Carol Rosen, Romance Languages: A Historical Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010), 276.
  13. Alkire & Rosen, Romance Languages, 275.
  14. Rodica Zafiu, "The Verb: Mood, Tense and Aspect", in The Grammar of Romanian, ed. Gabriela Panã Dindelegan (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013), 41.
  15. Blair A. Rudes, "The Functional Development of the Verbal Suffix +esc+ in Romance", in Historical Morphology, ed. Jacek Fisiak (The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter, 1980), 336.
  16. Anastasia Smirnova, Vedrana Mihaliček, Lauren Ressue, Formal Studies in Slavic Linguistics, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, Newcastle upon Type, Wielka Brytania, 2010: Barbara Tomaszewicz, Subjunctive Mood in Polish and the Clause Typing Hypothesis

Further reading