The meaning of this category is the attitude of the speaker, or writer towards the content of the sentence. It is expressed in the form of the verb. There are three moods in English-the indicative mood, the imperative mood and the subjunctive mood. The indicative mood indicates that what is said must be regarded as a fact, as something which has occurred or is occurring at the moment of speaking or will occur in the future. It may denote actions with different time-reference and different aspective characteristics. Therefore the indicative mood has a wide variety of tense and aspect forms. | THE SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD Introduction -- THE CATEGORY OF MOOD The meaning of this category is the attitude of the speaker or writer towards the content of the sentence. It is expressed in the form of the verb. There are three moods in English-the indicative mood the imperative mood and the subjunctive mood. The indicative mood indicates that what is said must be regarded as a fact as something which has occurred or is occurring at the moment of speaking or will occur in the future. It may denote actions with different time-reference and different aspective characteristics. Therefore the indicative mood has a wide variety of tense and aspect forms in the active and passive voice. The imperative mood expresses a command or a request to perform an action addressed to somebody but not the action itself. As it does not actually denote a specific action it has no tense category the action always refers to the future. Aspect distinctions and voice distinctions are not characteristic of the imperative mood although forms such as be writing be warned sometimes occur. The imperative mood form coincides with the plain stem of the verb for example Come here Sit down. The negative form is built by means of the auxiliary do. Do not take it away. Don t worry about the child. Don t be a fool. Note Do is also used in commands or requests to make them more emphatic Do come and stay with us. Do be quiet. In commands and requests addressed to a third person or persons the analytical form let. infinitive is used. When the person addressed is denoted by a personal pronoun it is used in the objective case. Let us go together. Let him finish his dinner first. Let Andrew do it himself. In negative sentences the analytical forms take the particle not without an auxiliary. Let us not argue on the matter. Let him not overestimate his chances. Let her not go any further. Note In sentences like Don t let him go the negation refers to the verb let which in this case fully retains its original .
