TENSE and MOOD

1. TENSE and MOOD

2. Mood & tense are two TOTALLY different grammatical aspects. “Tense” means time: Present – I study a lot. Past – I studied yesterday Future – I will study tomorrow.

3. Mood has absolutely NOTHING to do with time. There are 3 different moods in both English & Spanish: indicative, subjunctive, imperative. So there are 3 ways to use the present tense—1 in the indicative, 1 in the subjunctive, 1 in the imperative. Indicativeis the default mood in both languages. That is, if you have no reason to use the subjunctive or imperative, you use the indicative. Every verb on this page is in the indicativemood. Imperative is easy: it’s commands. In English, it’s easy to identify, because there’s always an understood “you”: Read this book! Eat your veggies! Subjunctive: this is the tough one. We don’t use it much in English at all. We use it when we want someone to get something done: I move that the meeting be adjourned. *** I suggest that he eat his veggies. You can tell that these verbs are subjunctive, because we don’t normally say, “The meeting be adjourned” or “He eat his veggies.” Another way we use it is when we use contrary-to-fact clauses: I wouldn’t do that if I were you (but I’m not). We’d leave if it were raining (but it’s not).

4. Look at the subjunctive examples from the previous slide: I move that the meeting be adjourned. I suggest that he eat his veggies. I wouldn’t do that if I were you (but I’m not). We’d leave if it were raining (but it’s not). Note that the first 2 are in the present TENSE. The second 2 are in the past TENSE. But both are the subjunctive MOOD. You may not even say “if I were you.” A lot of people don’t do that now. In Spanish, however, the subjunctive is used a LOT.

5. For English, the big thing for you to understand is that TENSE & MOOD are entirely different. You can have the present TENSE in the indicative mood, the imperative mood, or the subjunctive mood. You can have the subjunctive MOOD in the present tense or the past tense. TENSE is pretty straightforward, since it’s about time. MOOD is a little bit more complicated, since there are specific reasons for its use. The good news is that there really isn’t much of a reason to teach the subjunctive in English. We don’t use it much. We do use the imperative (commands), but that’s not something native speakers of English use incorrectly. The big thing for English majors is understanding that TENSE & MOOD are totally different.

6. The next set of slides (link below) is about form, voice, person, & number. All verbs can be identified in six ways—tense, mood, form, voice, person, & number. This is true in English & Spanish. Form, Voice, Person, Number