Mood and Modality I

Readings

You should read chapter four of Halliday's Introduction in relation to the analysis of mood and modality.

Mood and Modality and the Clause

One way by which one can glimpse at some of the preliminary issues in Halliday's approach to mood and modality, which are regarded by Halliday as belonging to the interpersonal metafunction of language, is by looking at a modification of the simple grammatical illustration below, which has been used in the previous lecture notes:

As you can see from the above table, we have added two more general categories:
Mood and Residue, and that

• Mood consists of Subject and Finite, whilst
• the Residue consists of Predicator, Complement, and (Circumstantial) Adjunct.

• the Finite element belongs to the Mood, and
• the Predicator element is part of the Residue.

The Finite Element

The Finite element of the clause involves what is called a finite verbal operator. The finite verbal operator, as you can see in the tables below (from p. 75 of the first edition of Halliday's Introduction), can be     
    Temporal or
    Modal
(Cf. p. 76 of the second edition or p. 116 of the third).

If the finite verbal operator is Temporal, it can represent
    Past,
    Present,
    or (according to Halliday) Future.
If it is Modal, it can be
    Median,
    Low, or
    High.

Table of Finite Verbal Operators

There is a revised and in some ways more useful version of the tables on p. 76 of the second edition or p. 116 of the third, which also deals with the positive and negative versions of these operators. By looking at the tables below, it should be obvious to most of you that the past, present, and future, which are used to describe the temporal operators, are indicators of tense (to be more precise, we can describe it as primary tense [pp. 75; 75; 115-16]). It should also be obvious that the modal operators are identical with the modal auxiliaries of traditional grammar. There is a difference of terminology here, with the word operator being used to indicate that each of these verbs performs a function on another verb, and does not stand alone.

• As the subject and the finite elements of the clause belong to mood, one naturally concentrates on these elements in analysing mood and modality. In fact, if one takes the Hallidayan approach in stylistics, one usually begins by looking at subject and finite in one's analysis. But other considerations are also involved in the overall approach to mood and modality. Two major ones are
• clausal mood (which is how the word mood is traditionally understood in grammar: see, for example, the electronic document Verbs -- Voice and Mood, produced by the On-Line Writing Lab of Purdue University), and
• the modal adjuncts in the clause. (Clausal mood and the modal adjuncts will be briefly dealt with later in this and the next lecture notes.)
• A fourth important consideration is polarity (i.e., whether something or an action is or isn't; see pp. 85-9; 88-92; 143-50 of Halliday's Introduction).

Some Problems You May Face in the Analysis of Clausal Mood

In relation to clausal mood, one feature of Halliday's analysis which may differ from traditional approaches to the topic, is the non-presence of the subjunctive mood. In spite of its non-presence, you may want to include the subjunctive in your analysis in stylistics, as it may indicate the speaker/writer's uncertainty about something, or his/her description of a hypothetical situation. The subjunctive is present in the very first sentence of one of the extracts (by T.H. Huxley) to be discussed in the present lecture notes:

'Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game of chess.'

One reason why the subjunctive is excluded from the analysis of mood by some modern grammarians of English, may lie with the fact that many clauses which can be classified as subjunctive can also be analysed in terms of one of the other types of clausal mood. The main clause of the above sentence ('Suppose'), for example, can be analysed in terms of the imperative mood, while the subordinate clause following it ('it were perfectly certain') can be analysed in terms of the declarative mood.

Grammatical Classification of the 'WH' element

Some of you may face problems with the grammatical classification of the WH-element in WH interrogatives (also known as 'open' interrogatives), as it can function as
    subject,
    complement or
    adjunct.

This is of some interest to us, as the classification of the WH-element as subject, complement or adjunct may be of stylistic consequence. Examples of wh-elements functioning as subject, complement or adjunct are given below.

(i)

Table 6.5

what	caused		the accident
Subject/WH-	'(past) Finite	cause Predicator	Complement
Mood		Residue

(ii)

Table 6.6

which road	is	it
Complement/WH-	Finite	Subject
Residue	Mood

(iii)

Table 6.7

where	did	you	see	it
Adjunct/WH-	Finite	Subject	Predicator	Complement
Residue	Mood		Residue

The above examples however, should not present too great a problem for those of you who have done some exercises in WH- movement in transformational grammar. By transforming a question to a declarative clause, for instance (or, in other words, by deriving the d-structure [which is always declarative in orthodox transformational grammar] from the given s-structure of the question), the reason why the WH-element is a subject or complement will become more apparent to you (e.g. from 'Which road is it?' to 'It is which road').

That 'where' in 'where have you been' (table 6.7) is an adjunct however, may seem less apparent. You may wonder for example, why it is an adjunct when what in 'what have the elephants done to the pier' is a complement. But where in the first clause clearly forms a locative function (possible d-structure: 'you have been [to] where'), and is thus an adjunct, whereas what in the second clause refers to something which the elephants have done, and thus has a direct object relationship with have . . . done, and is thus a complement.

Some Problems with the Imperative

There may also be some problems in relation to the analysis of the imperative mood. Examples which have a close relationship to Halliday's examples (pp. 85; 88; 140), are given below.

(a)

Table 6.8

come	into the lecture theatre	will	you
Predicator	Adjunct	Finite	Subject
Residue		Mood tag

(b)

Table 6.9

do	consider	my application	won't	you
Predicator	Predicator	Complement	Finite	Subject
Residue			Mood tag

(c)

Table 6.10

let's		walk	home	shall	we
Predicator	Subject	Predicator	Adjunct	Finite	Subject
Residue				Mood tag

(d)

Table 6.11

don't	you	trust	him
Predicator	Subject	Predicator	Complement
Residue

Example d) does seem to be problematic, as it could also be an interrogative:

Table 6.12

don't	you	trust	him?
Finite	Subject	Predicator	Complement
Mood		Residue

There are at least two ways to analyse sentences a) - c) . We can either analyse the whole of each of sentences a) - c) in terms of the imperative mood, which seems to be Halliday's position, or we can regard Halliday's 'mood tags' as interrogatives, and the clauses before the tags as imperatives. The tags at the end of sentences a) - c) seem to be examples of yes-no interrogatives, and are not only grammatically quite unlike the clauses preceding the tags (note the use of the grammatically significant modal operators), but from a functional perspective, they also seem to moderate the imperative nature of the antecedent clauses.

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Last revised: 25 December 2010
© Ismail S. Talib 1996-2009.