31. Phonetic Changes in the Modern English

AD 1725–1900.

Split into rhotic and non-rhotic accents: loss of syllable-final /ɹ/ in some varieties, especially of English English, producing new centering diphthongs /ɛə/(square), /ɪə/ (near), /ɔə/ (cord), /oə/ (sore), /ʊə/ (cure), and highly unusual phoneme /ɜː/ (nurse).

The father-bother merger: North American English merger of /ɒ/ as in lot, bother with /ɑ/ as in father; result is /ɑ/.

Exceptions are accents in Eastern New England (such as the Boston accent) and New York-New Jersey English.

Unrounding of EME /ɒ/ is found also in Norwich, the West Country and in Hiberno-English, but apparently with no phonemic merger.

The trap-bath split: southern English English /æ/ inconsistently becomes /ɑː/ before /s/, /f/, /θ/ and /n/ or /m/ followed by another consonant.

Hence RP has pass, glass, grass, class with /ɑː/ but mass, crass with /æ/. (All six words rhyme in most American English, Scottish English and northernEnglish English.)

Reduction of /hw/ to /w/, causing whine and wine to be homophones, in most varieties of English English; also, regionally, in American English.

American and Australian English flapping of /t/ and /d/ to [ɾ] in some circumstances.

Generally, between vowels (including syllabic [ɹ̩], [l̩] and [m̩]), when the following syllable is completely unstressed.

But not before syllabic [n̩] in American English, for example cotton [kɑʔn̩].

Happy tensing: final lax [ɪ] becomes tense [i] in words like happy. Absent from some dialects.

Line-loin merger: merger between the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /ɔɪ/ in some accents of Southern English English, Hiberno-English, Newfoundland English, and Caribbean English.

H dropping begins in English English and Welsh English, but this does not affect the upper-class southern accent that developed into Received Pronunciation, nor does it affect the far north of England or East Anglia. (Trudgill, p. 28-30)

After 1900

Some of these changes are in progress.

æ-tensing: raising, lengthening and/or diphthongization of /æ/ in some varieties of American English

Bad-lad split: the lengthening of /æ/ to [æː] in some words, found especially in Australian English

Lock-loch merger: the replacement of /x/ with /k/ among some younger Scottish English speakers from Glasgow.

Pin-pen merger: the raising of /ɛ/ to /ɪ/ before nasal consonants; can be found in Southern American English and southwestern varieties of Hiberno English.

Back Vowel Fronting: in many varieties of English all over the world, /u/ and to a lesser extent /o/ are gradually moving forward in the mouth. (Compare casual pronunciation of "food" to [fud].)

T glottalization becomes increasingly widespread in Great Britain.

Various treatments of th: Th-fronting, th-stopping, th-debuccalization and th-alveolarization

L-vocalization in the south-east of England, including London. This is not unique to the south-east of England, however, and is found in many other dialects.

Yod-dropping losing /j/ in initial consonant clusters.

32. Grammatical changes in the Modern English period.

Early Mn.E. started in the 16th century and took place until mid 17^th century. Later Mn. E. lasted from middle 17^th century until 19^th century and the reason why we divide the Mn.E. period into 3 periods: Early Mn, later Mn, contemporary present day English because we need to understand the borders between M.E. and early Mn.E. and other stage of the language development. Early Mn. E. presents a natural form of middle English development into the Mn. E. language. So the early Mn. E. is such a stage of language development where at which main changes of M.E. anto Mn.E. occurred.

Early Modern English (1500 - 1650/1700 CE)

William Caxton introduced the printing press to England in 1476 and the East Midland dialect became the literary standard of English. Ten thousand words were added to English as writers created new words by using Greek and Latin affixes. Some words, such as devulgate, attemptate and dispraise, are no longer used in English, but several words were also borrowed from other languages as well as from Chaucer's works. In 1582, Richard Mulcaster proposed in his treatise "Elementaire" a compromise on spelling and by 1623, Henry Cockrum published his English dictionary. The printing press helped to standardize the spelling of English in its modern stag

Characteristics of Early Modern English

Adjectives lost all endings except for in the comparative and superlative forms. The neuter pronoun it was first used as well as who as a relative pronoun. The class distinctions between formal and informal you were decreasing, so that today there is no difference between them. More strong verbs became weak and the third person singular form became -(e)s instead of -(e)th. There was a more limited use of the progressive and auxiliary verbs than there is now, however. Negatives followed the verb and multiple negatives were still used.

Middle English (1066 - 1500 CE)

The period of Middle English begins with the Norman invasion of 1066 CE. King Edward the Confessor had died without heirs, and William, Duke of Normandy, believed that he would become the next king. However, upon learning that Harold was crowned king, William invaded England, killed Harold and crowned himself king during the famous Battle of Hastings. Yet William spoke only French. As a result, the upper class in England began to speak French while the lower classes spoke English.

But by 1250 CE, French began to lose its prestige. King John had lost Normandy to the French in 1204 CE, and after him, King Edward I spoke only English. At this time, many foreigners entered England which made the nobility feel more "English" and so encouraged more use of the English language. The upper class tried to learn English, but they did still use French words sometimes, which was considered somewhat snobbish. French still maintained its prestige elsewhere, and the upper class did not want to lose it completely. Nevertheless, the Hundred Year's War (1337-1453 CE) intensified hatred of all things French. The Black Death also played a role in increasing English use with the emergence of the middle class. Several of the workers had been killed by the plague, which increased the status of the peasants, who only spoke English. By 1362 CE, the Statute of Pleading (although written in French) declared English as the official spoken language of the courts. By 1385 CE, English was the language of instruction in schools. 1350 to 1400 CE is known as the Period of Great Individual Writers (most famously, Chaucer), but their works included an apology for writing in English.

Although the popularity of French was decreasing, several words (around 10,000) were borrowed into English between 1250 and 1500 CE (though most of these words were Parisian rather than Norman French). Many of the words were related to government (sovereign, empire), law (judge, jury, justice, attorney, felony, larceny), social life (fashion, embroidery, cuisine, appetite) and learning (poet, logic, physician). Furthermore, the legal system retained parts of French word order (the adjective following the noun) in such terms as fee simple, attorney general and accounts payable.

Characteristics of Middle English

Verb infinitives dropped the -an ending, and used "to" before the verb to signify the infinitival form. The third person singular and plural was marked with -(e)th; but the singular also competed with -(e)s from the Northern dialect. More strong (irregular) verbs became weak (regular) as well.

Adjectives lost agreement with the noun, but the weak ending -e still remained. The comparative form became -er and the superlative became -est. Vowels tended to be long in the adjective form, but short in the comparative form (late - latter). The demonstratives these and those were added during this period. And the adverb ending -lič became -ly; however, some "flat" adverbs did not add the -ly: fast, late, hard.

The dual number disappeared in the pronouns, and the dative and accusative became the object forms of the pronouns. The third person plural pronouns replaced the old pronouns with th- words (they, them, their) borrowed from Scandinavian. She started being used for the feminine singular subject pronoun and you (plural form) was used in the singular as a status marker for the formal.

Syntax was stricter and more prepositions were used. New compound tenses were used, such as the perfect tenses, and there was more use of the progressive and passive voice. The use of double negation also increased as did impersonal constructions. The use of the verbs will and shall for the future tense were first used too. Formerly, will meant want and shall meant obliged to.

Characteristics of the Old English language

The Germanic tribes were exposed to Latin before they invaded England, so the languages they spoke did have some Latin influence. After converting to Christianity, Latin had more influence, as evidenced in words pertaining to the church. Celtic did not have a large impact on English, as only a few place names are of Celtic origin, but Danish (Old Scandinavian) did contribute many vocabulary words.

Nouns could be of three genders: masculine, feminine or neuter; but these were assigned arbitrarily. Numbers could be either singular or plural, and there were four cases: nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive. In all, there were seven groups of declensions for nouns.

The infinitive of verbs ended in -an. In the present tense, all verbs had markers for number and person. The weak past tense added -de, while the strong past tense usually involved a vowel change. Old English also had many more strong verbs than modern English.

Adjectives could be weak or strong. If preceded by a determiner, the weak ending was added to the adjective. If no determiner preceded the adjective, then the strong endings were used. They also agreed in gender, case and number with the nouns they described. The comparative was formed by adding -ra to the adjective, while the superlative had many endings: -ost, -ist, -est, and -m. Eventually the -ost and -m endings combined to form the word "most" which is still used before adjectives in the superlative today.

Adverbs were formed by adding -e to the adjective, or -lic, the latter which still remains in modern English as -like.

The syntax of Old English was much more flexible than modern English becase of the declensions of the nouns. The case endings told the function of the word in the sentence, so word order was not very important. But as the stress began to move to the first syllable of words, the endings were not pronounced as clearly and began to diminish from the language. So in modern English, word order is very important because we no longer have declensions to show case distinctions. Instead we use prepositions. The general word order was subject - verb - object, but it did vary in a few instances:

1. When an object is a pronoun, it often precedes the verb.

2. When a sentence begins with an adverb, the subject often follows the verb.

3. The verb often comes at the end of a subordinate clause.

Changes in grammar.

Noun. Plurality of nouns. In ME there was a competition between different ways of expressing plurality: en – s – es. Eyen, foen. Strong ME forms began to weaken and in modern E the s-form eyes replaced the older form. But even in EME at the end of the 16th century we still find forms like eyen.

Plural forms of nouns with final f, th alteration of the voiceless fricative with its voiced counterpart (v) was eliminated: roof – roofs, death – deaths. But there are wife – wives, half – halves. In some cases two variants are possible: scarf – scarfs – scarves. The word staff split into two words: staff and stave. Alteration f-v extends in modern E: handkerchief – chiefs – chieves.

A few nouns have preserved their plural forms of the weak declension or mutation: ox – oxen; child – children, mouse – mice; foot – feet; goose – gees; tooth – teeth.

These words remind us about ancient linguistic processes, that had been happening in the language system.

There is a group of nouns, which do not accept the –s ending at all: sheep, deer, swine, fruit, fish, summon. trout, cord.

Some isolated plurals have also been preserved in a few phrases, that merged together into compound words: fortnight, seningt. Mile – miles – idiom.

The two case system, which was typical of Chaucer's English, emerged in modern E. Preposition of – analytical form of the Genitive case. The Genitive case became restricted to words denoting living beings and some time notions. Words denoting inanimate objects and abstract ideas were used with preposition of to render the meaning of the Genitive case.

In modern E time we can see the start of the apostrophe use to denote the Genitive case.

Pronouns. Distinction between Nom. ye and Obj. you began to disappear. The form ye became archaic.

The neuter pronoun vacillation between hit and it continued to the end of 16th century. H – dropping.

The neuter possessive pronoun his survived until the 17th century.

The forms mine and thine were used both with a noun following it and without it.

New pronouns: compound – somebody, nobody, something, anything, nothing.

Adjectives. Adjectives dropped the ending –e, which had signaled the plural and the weak declension in ME and this phenomenon was very important. The language lost the idea or necessity of agreement between a noun and an adjective in number.

In modern E two tipes of degrees of comparison were different. They were different in the following way: suffixes of degrees of comparison are used for monosyllabic and some disyllabic adjectives. Forms with more and most became limited to the rest of disyllabic and polysyllabic adjectives. This process had long continuation as we can see in the language of Shakespeare, where we can find both types and mixed forms.

Mutated forms of comparative and superlative degrees were present in ME, but were eliminated in modern E. In ME we had long – lenger – longest, old – elder – eldest. Elder – changed its meaning.

Suppletive forms of degrees of comparison good – better – best have been preserved to the present days. Evil – bad – worth.

Verb. New forms had its development: continuous forms, perfect forms.

The ending –e was lost in the 1st p. sg. , pl. , present indicative and in infinitive.

The 2d p. form –st connected with thou was gradually ousted during the 17th century,

In the 3d p. sg. the ending –eth was gradually replaced by the ending –s, which in ME had been a characteristic feature of the northern dialect. This replacement took place between the 15th and the 17th century,

The four basic form system of strong verbs in OE and ME changed into three form system in modern E.

A number of short verbs became weak. And some strong verbs acquired a weak form or retain strong form.

29.05.10

During the Mn. E. period many changes occurred to the English language.

The period of lost endings : majority of endings disappeared. Only endings which still were seen and heard around archaic forms –en ending for plural and main trend of regularization. Language becomes more regularized. –en ending of some participle forms which began to be replaced to more standard form –ed. In some cases we see retained prefix y- [ju] which came from OE ge-. (Sh: y-clad=closed) when it comes to –en ending to Participle II we can see double froms.: bidden-bid, got-gotten .

Weak verbs: because of loss of e-ending classification or division of weak verbs into groups and classes becomes unnecessary ,because all of them acquired –ed in the past forms (deem-deemed-deemed, hope-hoped-hoped). Sometimes in early MnE, in Sh language especially e in –ed­ is pronounced in rare cases. Performed [æd] enlarged [inlargæd] (по рифме определили,что æ произносится) The ustressed vowel is kept only after d and t. ended[ endid] ,wanted [wcntid]. e-less pronounciation in most words. Some peculiar forms are retained in 1 class of verbs. ex. in M.E. there was such verb recnen [retſen]-reughte[rohte]-raught[ro:t] ; in early Mn.E. became rich-riched,strechen-straughte-straught \stretch-stretched-streched in Mn.E.) aught осталось в прил. straight. Futher changes in verbs is connected with transferece of verbs with strong verbs.

Ex.

1 class	Grippen\to grip\ gliden \glide\
2 class	Chewen\to chew\cleven\to cleve\crepen\to creep\bowlen\bow\
3 class	climben[klimben]helpen, swalowen\to swallow \melten \to melt\
5* class	meten\to melt\ wrecken \to wreck\
6 class	faren \to fare\shawen \to shave\backen \to bake\graven \to grave\wacken \wake\
7 class	lepen \to leep\ slepen \to sleep\solten walken[wΛlken]wepen\weep\

*4 class распределился между остальными в средние века

Some verbs preserved in ME both strong forms and weak forms. to cleve , PII both cleft,clove verb to climb sometimes is used its archaic strong past form clomb. to melt sometimes retains its PII archaic form molten. In fixed expressions molten lead плавленый свинец .Some verbs belonging to strong conjugation sometimes have weak forms. abide has standard abade,but sometimes it also has abided-abided. thrive standard throve,thriven and thrived-trived. The vernb niman used to belong to 4^th class which than came together with class 5. This verb was pure Germanic english word then replaced by scandinavian to take. Today it has archaic PII in numb- meaning.

The process of acquiring past tense and participle forms of passive aspects found development up to today's grammatical system of English language. Later Mn.E. is being knelt . 1650 до конца 19 в. – later Mn.E. лифтонгизация e в [i] vowel shift see[se:] à[si] ; two [to:] à [tu:]

Nowadays english youth says [tou] .

Kitchen [kitſæ], system [sistæ] , waitress [waitræs] возвращение к среднеангл. произн.

-Innovation – often [often] , news [nu:z] am.e. [nju:z] br.e. ; chew [tſju] à[tſu:]; June [d3ju:n]à[d3u:n] ; suit [su:t] ME am.e. lute [lu:t] ; enthusiasm [enθjuziazm] new tendency.

-h-dropping humble was [Λmbl] now [hΛmbl] , tell them [telem]

-r 2 направления : 1) потеря в безударных слогах 2) усиление, интрузивность в связной речи Africa and America [æfrikarændæmerika] the idea is [aidiəriz] law {r}order , withdraw{r}al , 18-19 - century пуристы пытались остановить процесс

- изменение ударения в пользу восстановления базового ударения

база	Старое произношение	Новое произношение
Capital	Cap'italist	'capitalist
Converse	'conversed	Con'versed
Demonstrate	De'monstrable	'demonstrable
Prefer	'preferable	Pre'ferable

Тенденция к смещению ударения к первому слогу, как было в древнем английском. 3 слог с конца в многосложных словах ударный. Стало модно произносить заимствованные слова на манер их произношения в родном языке.

Ricochet [rikə∫ei] ; armada [ama:də ] ; 'doctrinal à doct'rinal ; formidableà formi'dable

Политкорректность PC language

Mankindàhumankind, manàhuman, chairmanàchairperson, businessmanàbusiness executive, camera\crafts manàcamera\craftsperson. policemanàpolice officer, statesman-->statesperson, weathermanà weather forcaster ,meteorologist , foremanàsuperviser, sex change à gender reassignment , unintelligent à intellectually challenged, murderà liquidation, apartheid à multinationalization

Both synthetical and analytical forms of producting adjectives just-juster\more just , давление латинского языка

33. Formation of the national language in Modern times.

The Systems of Language

The major systems that make up the broad comprehensive system of language itself are four in number: lexicon, grammar, semantics, and phonology. The one that dictionary editors and dictionary users are most directly concerned with is the vocabulary or lexicon, the collection of words and word elements which we put together in various ways to form larger units of discourse: phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs, and so forth. All languages have a lexicon, and all lexicons are governed by rules that permit some kinds of word formation, make others dubious, and render still others clearly impossible. In English we might say versatileness without hesitation if we needed such a word and could not for the moment think of versatility, even though the former is not normally part of our everyday working vocabulary; but versatilize might give us considerable pause, and nessversatile we would simply never utter. The size of the lexicon varies considerably from language to language. The language of an isolated people, for example, may be perfectly adequate with a relatively small and fixed vocabulary, since it has no need of the coinages attendant upon modern technology, while English and other major languages have enormous stocks of words, to which they add year by year at a great rate. Since the dictionary is concentrated upon the lexicon, our discussion of the other systems of language, as it proceeds, will be largely concerned with how they are related to the lexicon and thus are important within the dictionary.

The grammatical system of language governs the way in which words are put together to form the larger units of discourse mentioned earlier. Grammar, of course, varies a great deal from language to language just as the lexicon does: in English, word order is a dominant factor in determining meaning, while the use of inflectional endings to mark the grammatical function of individual words within a sentence plays a clearly subordinate role, though important in some ways (as in indicating the number of a noun, the case of a personal pronoun, and the tense of a verb). Other languages show markedly different patterns, such as Latin with its elaborate set of paradigms for nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns and its highly flexible word order. The semantic system of a language has to do with meanings and thus with the relation between the conventionalized symbols that constitute language and the external reality about which we need to communicate through language. The phonological system of a language is what allows a speaker of that language to transform a grammatical unit embodying a meaning into a flow of uttered sounds that can be heard and interpreted (accurately, if all goes well) by another speaker of the language. This system is always very tightly organized. The inventory of basic meaningful units of sound within a language (called phonemes by linguists) is never very large compared with the number of words and word elements in the lexicon; most speakers of English get by with about 40. Phonemes are identified by the fact that in some pairs of words they create a contrast that signals a difference in meaning: we consider the vowel sounds of trip and trap to be different phonemes because the difference in vowel sounds is the sole determinant of their being distinct words. Their consonant sounds are identical. Similarly, the initial consonant sounds of pull and bull, tie and die, and come and gum are contrasting phonemes. On the other hand, the sound at the beginning of pit and at the end of tip are phonetically quite different, but as they do not contrast meaningfully we do not perceive them as distinct phonemes. The combinations of these phonemes permitted in a given language are severely restricted, as are the ways in which speech sounds occur in conjunction with other significant elements of the phonological system such as stress (force or intensity) and intonation (the rise and fall in pitch of the voice as it moves through an utterance). In English, for example, it is possible for the consonants bsstrbs to occur in succession, but only at the beginning of a word (as in strict) or in the middle (as in monstrous), not at the end, and the sequence bspgrbs cannot occur at either the beginning or the end of a word but may occur in the middle (as in upgrade).

34. The English Tenses through the History of English.

A little bit more about Old English tenses. Syntactically, the language had only two main tenses - the Present and the Past. No progressive (or Continuous) tenses were used, they were invented only in the Early Middle English period. Such complex tenses as modern Future in the Past, Future Perfect Continuous did not exist either. However, some analytic construction were in use, and first of all the perfective constructions. The example Hie geweorc geworhten hæfdon 'they have build a fortress' shows the exact Perfect tense, but at that time it was not the tense really, just a participle construction showing that the action has been done. Seldom you can also find such Past constructions, which later became the Past Perfect Tense.

Old English had only two tenses,—the present tense, which represented present and future time; and the past tense. We still use the present for the future in such expressions as, "I go away to-morrow;" "If he comes, tell him to wait."

But English of the present day not only has a tense for each of the natural time divisions,—present, past, and future,—but has other tenses to correspond with those of highly inflected languages, such as Latin and Greek. The verb had only two tenses - the present and the past preterite tense. There were three moods, all of them formed flectively. All strong verbs were divided into seven classes, each of them reflected certain vowel mutation in the root: such verbs are called irregular in today's English. Weak verbs formed their past tense without any ablaut, but adding the suffix -ed-.

Now some practice examples for you to check your Old English:

Spræce Englisc tung - I speak English

Síehst þú þá duru? - Do you see the door?

Her comm se here into Escanceastre from Werham - Here came that army to Escancaster from Werham (mind that her is 'here' and here is 'an army')

Ond Asser biscop gefor æfter þæm - And Asser the bishop gone after those (i.e. has gone after them)

On þysum geare com micel sciphere hider ofer suþan of Lidwiccum, ond twegen eorlas mid, Ohtor ond Hroald - This year a large army came with ships south to Lidwich, and two earls together with them, Ohtor and Roald.

Middle English

As a general rule (and all these rules are general), the first person singular of verbs in the present tense ends in -e ("ich here" - "I hear"), the second person in -(e)st ("þou spekest" - "thou speakest"), and the third person in -eþ ("he comeþ" - "he cometh/he comes"). (þ is pronounced like the unvoiced th in "think").

In the past tense, weak verbs are formed by adding an -ed(e), -d(e) or -t(e) ending. These, without their personal endings, also form past participles, together with past-participle prefixes derived from Old English: i-, y- and sometimes bi-.

Strong verbs, by contrast, form their past tense by changing their stem vowel (e.g. binden -> bound), as in Modern English.

Modern English

Tense in English is grouped into two types -- pure tense and modal tense. Pure tense refers to expressions of present, past, and future tenses in which secondary temporal reference (Time of Assertion, Time of Completion, or Time of Evaluation) is known or perceived to be fully certain. In other words, pure tense refers to expressions in which the attestation is known or thought to be true. Modal tense on the other hand, refers to expressions of present, past, or future in which the certainty of the attestation is not fully certain. In English these forms are expressed with the addition of a modal, modal phrase, or modal adverb.

Only the past tenses in English are expressed by declining the verb. In all raw and perfected aspects, past tense is expressed using the præterite form of the aspectual auxiliary (did, was/were, had) in periphrastic form. In the non-durational aspects (commonly referred to as the Simple Aspect), past tenses may be expressed via a special inflected form in which the aspectual auxiliary 'did' is omitted and the præterite of the content verb is used. This form is only possible in some affirmative statements. In all other types of utterance, the periphrastic form must be employed.

Present tenses are expressed via an unmarked form similar to those of the past tenses, but with the aspectual auxiliary only declined for agreement with person and number (do/does, am/is/are, have/has) in periphrastic forms. As with past tenses inflected forms may be used for certain affirmative statements.

Pure future tenses in English are expressed in the same way as the present tenses but with the addition of a future-marking adverb or time phrase.

Modal Tenses in English are expressed using either the fully undeclined modal form, or a pure tense form with an additional modal adverb or phrase. Modal tense is most often used in English for expressing futurity.

Modal Future refers to any of eight future forms in which the attestation cannot be known to be true due to the uncertain nature of future outcomes. These forms vary by certainty and always express that level of future certainty within the scope of a supporting mood.

Tenses interact with the grammatical concept of aspect. Aspect defines how the flow of time is viewed in the sentence.

1. The Progressive (or continuous) Aspect views the action in the process of happening, being in the middle of things and not having completed it.

Ron is cooking dinner at the moment.

[He is still doing it and not finished]

2. The Perfect Aspect views the action as having been completed before another point in time. The action is finished but may influence what follows it.

Ron has already seen this film.

[The action is completed. It may influence our present choice of what film to see, since we don’t want Ron to see it again]

3. The Perfect-Progressive Aspect combines the qualities of the previous two. It views the action as an ongoing one that has been going on until a certain point in time and having been completed up to that point. The may influence what follows.

By 1996, Dona had been dieting rather seriously and subsequently lost a lot of weight.

[Dona was in an ongoing process that was completed in 1996. This influenced what followed – the loss of weight]

4. The Simple (or Zero) Aspect does not relate to the flow of time and merely states whether or not the action occurs.

Dona works in London.

Tense, Aspect and Mood

Another related grammatical concept here is mood. Mood (or mode) regards the relationship of the verb with reality and intent. While other languages have different verb forms for the same tenses in different moods, English does not get too complicated with moods. Some regard English as having the following four moods:

1. The Indicative Mood regards the action as actually occurring in reality, as a matter of fact. All the tenses mentioned above are in the indicative mood, which is the most prevalent in English.

2. The Imperative Mood states requests, orders, and strong suggestions.

Go there now! Do not postpone this any longer!

3. The Conditional Mood regards the action as not factually occurring in reality, but only as a result of a potential fulfillment of some condition (irreality).

• The Present Conditional (would+base verb) expresses hypothetical results, reporting what someone said, and in polite speech.

If I won the lottery, I would go on a trip around the world.

• The Past Conditional (would+ have+ past participle form of the verb) expresses hypothetical outcomes that may have occurred in the past and can no longer be achieved.

If you had told me about the party, I would have come with you (but you didn’t).

4. The Subjunctive Mood expresses desires, wishes, and assumptions that are not necessarily to be fulfilled in reality. It is used in specific figures of speech and is of little use in Modern English.

I demand that she leave at once!

If only you were here!

If that be the case, than…