Feature GB119: Can mood be marked by an inflecting word ("auxiliary verb")?

Patrons: Hedvig Skirgård

Description ⇫

Summary

This feature covers all grammatical moods (the relationship between the referred event/state/action and other possible worlds, or speaker's attitude) and aims to capture phonologically free elements that inflect (i.e. change form depending on person, number and other categories of the core arguments). These markers are often described as ‘auxiliary verbs’ in the literature, but are also analyzed under other labels by some authors (such as STAMP morphemes (STAM = Subject-Tense-Aspect-Mood-Polarity) or inflecting pronouns). We are interested in grammatical marking, i.e. dedicated, productive and obligatory marking.

There are instances where TAM can be expressed by a combination of an affix and auxiliary or particle. For example, some grammarians state that a mood is expressed by a certain form on the verbal root and an auxiliary. If this is a productive and obligatory way of expressing mood then such a construction triggers 1 for both this feature (GB119) and the feature on bound mood marking (GB312). If not all parts of the discontinuous marking are necessary for expressing a mood, then only consider the marking that is obligatory.

While negation or interrogation can be considered as grammatical moods, they are not included in this feature.

Procedure

  1. Look up the section on mood marking in the grammatical description.
  2. Consider all marking of mood, e.g. not only conditional.
  3. If you do not find any inflecting words expressing mood, such as auxiliary verbs or elements analyzed as pronouns that take TAM marking, code as 0.
  4. If there is an inflecting word (e.g. an auxiliary verb) that clearly expresses mood, code the language as 1.
  5. If it is not clear whether the inflecting word marks mood, code the language as ?.

Examples

Turkish (ISO 639-3: vma, Glottolog: mart1255)

In Turkish, the verb ‘to be’ ol forms an auxiliary verb together with a bound mood marker. The following is an example with necessitative mood. Turkish is coded as 1 for this feature.

Ali   oda-ya    gir-erken   Hasan  iş-in-i       bit-ir-iyor      ol-malı-y-dı
Ali   room-DAT  enter-while Hasan  work-3SG-ACC  finish-CAUS-PROG be-NEC-COP-PST
‘While Ali was entering the room Hasan had to be finishing his work.’ (Kornfilt 1997: 365)

Further reading

Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins & William Pagliuca. 1994. The evolution of grammar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dahl, Östen. 1985. Tense and aspect systems. Oxford: Blackwell.

Palmer, Frank R. 2001. Mood and modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Narrog, Heiko. 2012. Modality, subjectivity, and semantic change: A cross-linguistic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

References

Kornfilt, Jaklin. 1997. Turkish. (Descriptive Grammars Series.) London: Routledge.


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0 absent 1356
1 present 529
? Not known 310
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Values ⇫

Name Glottocode Family Macroarea Contributor Value Source Comment