The system of two Moods

Systems comprising two moods have been proposed by M.Y.Bloch and L.S.Barchudarov. Let's now consider each of them in detail.

The category of mood according to M.Y.Bloch expresses the speaker's interpretation of the situation as actual or imaginary. He distinguishes two moods in Modern English: The Indicative and the Subjunctive, which stand in opposition to each other, thus, forming a unity of the system. The indicative mood represents an action as actual, while the subjunctive mood shows it as imaginary.

The subjunctive mood is further subdivided into spective and conditional moods, which in their turn have further subdivisions. Spective is represented by pure spective (be and imperative) and modal spective (may, let, should + infinitive). Conditional consists of stipulative (were, knew) and consective (had known). For the sake of simplifying the working terminology M.Y.Bloch calls moods, which belong to the Subjunctive, the following names: Subjunctive I (p_Ure spective), Subjunctive II (stipulative), Subjunctive III (consectivc) and Modal Subjunctive (modal spective). Thus a twofold system turns into fivefold.

It is necessary to point out that the formal mark of the opposition Indicative - Subjunctive in M.Y.Bloch's theory is the tense-retrospect shift (tense-phase shift in our terminology). The shift consists in the following: the opposition of perfect and non-perfect phases turns into the opposition of relative substitutes for the absolute past and present tenses of the indicative. For example: I know it (present real) - I wish I knew it (present unreal); I knew it (past real) - I wish I had known it (past unreal).

The analysis of M.Y.Bloch's theory of mood shows that it is another attempt to expose the correlation of form and meaning of the category of mood.

Let’s refer it to the semantic approach. At least because the only formal feature that distinguishes Indicative from Subjunctive is the tense-phase shift.

This shift is very important in expressing unreality, but tense and phase are Verbal categories other than mood and should be treated as such. The use to express unreal actions is characteristic of them only in certain contexts (subordinate clauses of definite types), and thus may be considered peripheral or secondary for these categories.

Proceeding from our understanding of the relations between mood and modality we may say that the categories of tense and phase in certain contexts are used as the means of expressing modality (namely modality of unreality), not mood. We share the view that one grammatical category cannot be expressed by another. In this very case we witness a certain confusion between mood and modality on the part of the eminent scholar.