Mood

Throughout this book we have described speakers using syntax in order to talk about situations, adopting different perspectives on a given situation. This was a central part of the discussion of roles and continues to be a central part of mood, tense, aspect and voice. It would be very pleasing and appropriate if ‘mood’ as a technical term in grammar derived from or was historically associated with ‘mood’ as a term applied to psychological states. Unfortunately it is not, since the latter is cognate with a German word and the former derives from the Latin word which has also survived in Modern English as ‘mode’. The central point is that speakers have different modes of presenting situations.