Description
Oxford Mood 2018 Edition by Paul Portner
This book presents the essential
background for understanding semantic theories of mood. Mood as a category is
widely used in the description of languages and the formal analysis of their
grammatical properties. It typically refers to the features of a sentence-individual
morphemes or grammatical patterns-that reflect how the sentence contributes to
the modal meaning of a larger phrase, or that indicate the type of fundamental
pragmatic function that it has in
conversation. In this volume, Paul Portner discusses
the most significant semantic theories relating to the two main subtypes of
mood: verbal mood, including the categories of indicative and subjunctive
subordinate clauses, and sentence mood, encompassing declaratives,
interrogatives, and imperatives. He
evaluates those theories, compares them, and draws
connections between seemingly disparate approaches, and he formalizes some of
the literature's most important ideas in new ways in order to draw out their
most significant insights. Ultimately, this work shows that there are crucial
connections between verbal mood and sentence mood which point the way towards a
more general understanding of how mood works and its relation to other topics
in linguistics; it also outlines the type of semantic and
pragmatic theory which will make it possible to
explain these relations. The book will be a valuable resource for researchers
and students from advanced undergraduate level upwards in the fields of
semantics and pragmatics, philosophy, computer science, and psychology
General preface
Acknowledgments
List of figures and tables
1: Introduction
2: Verbal mood
3: Sentence mood
4: Core mood, reality status, and evidentiality
References
Index