LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 13 : 1 January 2013
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Grammatical Moods in Bodo

Aleendra Brahma, M.A. (Double), M.Phil., Ph.D. Scholar

1.0 Abstract

Every clause or sentence of a language has a basic illocutionary force on the basis of which it is categorized under any of the types, namely, affirmative, interrogative, imperative, optative and exclamatory. The illocutionary force is nothing but the modality of the clause/sentence, and this modality is signaled by a device called mood. So, mood is the grammatical device that signals any of the modalities like fact, command, question, wish or conditionality, etc. It may be a distinctive grammatical form/element such as a grammatical category (affix) or a post-position of a verb. However, illocutionary forces categorize clauses/sentences into limited kinds while moods can categorize them into larger kinds. This paper investigates different types of morphological and syntactic moods in the Bodo language.

Moods can be sub-categorized into two different kinds, namely, realis or factual and irrealis or contrafactual or contrafactive. There is only one realis mood in Bodo while the majority of irrealis kinds of grammatical mood are found.

1.1 Introduction

The investigation of a large number of languages suggests that what has traditionally been called "mood" is only one type of grammatical sub-category, another such sub-category being "modal system" within a wider grammatical category "modality" (Palmer 2003). However, mood and modality are not so easily defined as tense and aspect. A definiton often proposed is that modality is the grammaticalization of speakers' (subjective) attitudes and opinions (ByBee 1994). Mood is a feature of the verb that reflects the speaker's attitude toward what he is saying. Of course, in all languages there are lots of ways that a speaker can reflect his attitude toward what he is saying: through intonation, by overtly commenting upon what he says, by raising his voice or swinging his fist (McShane 2003).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Aleendra Brahma, M.A. (Double), M.Phil., Ph. D. Scholar
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati
Kamrup(M) -781 039
Assam
India
aleendra.iitg@gmail.com
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