Alethic mood

Alethic mood

Some languages distinguish between alethic moods and non-alethic moods. Alethic moods indicate logical possibility, impossibility or necessity, whereas different moods are used to indicate other types of possibility/necessity. In such a language, "A circle can't be square", "can't be" would be expressed by an alethic mood, whereas for "He can't be that wealthy", "can't be" would be expressed by a non-alethic mood. As can be seen, this is not a distinction drawn in English grammar.

ee also

* Grammatical mood

Further reading

*Georg Henrik von Wright, "Deontic Logic", in Mind 60: 1-15 (1951).


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужен реферат?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Grammatical mood — Grammatical categories Animacy Aspect Case Clusivity Definiteness Degree of comparison Evidentiality Focus …   Wikipedia

  • Irrealis mood — Irrealis moods (abbreviated irr) are the main set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened as the speaker is talking. Every language has a formula for the unreal. The Indian languages of… …   Wikipedia

  • Subjunctive mood — In grammar, the subjunctive mood (abbreviated sjv or sbjv) is a verb mood typically used in subordinate clauses to express various states of irreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet… …   Wikipedia

  • Realis mood — Realis moods (abbreviated real) are a category of grammatical moods which indicate that something is actually the case (or actually not the case); in other words, the state of which is known. The most common realis mood is the indicative mood, or …   Wikipedia

  • Optative mood — The optative mood (abbreviated opt) is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope. It is similar to the cohortative mood, and closely related to the subjunctive mood. Ancient Greek, Albanian, Armenian, Georgian, Kurdish, Old Prussian,… …   Wikipedia

  • Interrogative mood — In linguistics and grammar, the interrogative mood (abbreviated int) is an epistemic grammatical mood used for asking questions by inflecting the main verb.[1] Its occurrence is rare. Contents 1 Examples of languages with an interrogative mood …   Wikipedia

  • Conditional mood — In linguistics, the conditional mood (abbreviated cond) is the inflectional form of the verb used in the independent clause of a conditional sentence to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event, that is contingent on… …   Wikipedia

  • Deductive mood — The deductive mood is an epistemic grammatical mood that indicates that the truth of the statement was deduced from other information, rather than being directly known.[1] In English, deductive mood is often indicated by the word must, which is… …   Wikipedia

  • Deliberative mood — (abbreviated del) is a grammatical mood that asks whether the speaker should do something, e. g. Shall I go to the market? [1] The Afar language has a deliberative mood, as in aboo Shall I do (it)? , with the suffix oo denoting the… …   Wikipedia

  • Dubitative mood — (abbreviated dub) is an epistemic grammatical mood found in some languages, that indicates that the statement is dubious, doubtful, or uncertain.[1] It may subsist as a separate morphological category, as in Bulgarian, or else as a category of… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”