The category of mood

The use of the agentive by-object

§ 72. The use of the agentive by-object is highly restricted, it occurs in one case out of five, and even less frequently in colloquial speech and imaginative prose. However, when it does occur, the by-object is of great communicative value, and its elimination would often make the meaning of the verb incomplete and the sentence devoid of meaning.

The agent may be a living being, or any thing or notion that can be the source of the action.

The whole scene was being enacted by puppets.

In some areas the picture has been barely touched by the brush.

I was wounded by a landmine.

The distant mountain had been formed by fire and water.

How much was she influenced by that fake idea?

Besides a noun and very rarely a pronoun, a by-object may be a gerundial phrase or complex, or a subordinate clause.

I was then awakened only by knocking on the window and Annie telling the person responsible to go off.

She didn’t really know anything about people, she was always being taken in by what they told her.

Owing to its communicative value and the final position in the sentence, the by-object may be expanded, if necessary, to an extent that is hardly possible in the subject group, as in this commentary on Cezanne's painting:

“The Card Players.” The subject of this painting of two peasants playing cards was probably inspired by a similar composition by one of the brothers de Pack, French painters of the seventeenth century whose work Cezanne admired.

§ 73. The meaning of this category is the attitude of the speaker or writer towards the content of the sentence, whether the speaker considers the action real, unreal, desirable, necessary, etc. It is expressed in the form of the verb.

There are three moods in English - the indicative mood, the impera­tive mood and the subjunctive mood.

The indicative mood

§ 74. The indicative mood form shows that what is said must be regarded as a fact, as something which has occurred or is occurring at the moment of speaking or will occur in the future. It may denote actions with different time-reference and different aspective characteristics. Therefore the indicative mood has a wide variety of tense and aspect forms in the active and passive voice.

The imperative mood

§ 75. The imperative mood expresses a command or a request to perform an action addressed to somebody, but not the action itself. As it does not actually denote an action as a real act, it has no tense category; the unfulfilled action always refers to the future. Aspect distinctions and voice distinctions are not characteristic of the imperative mood, although forms such as, be writing, be warned sometimes occur.

The imperative mood form coincides with the plain stem of the verb, for example: Come here! Sit down. The negative form is built by means of the auxiliary do + the negative particle not (the contracted form is don’t). This form is always addressed to the second person.

Do not take it away.

Don’t worry about the child.

Don’t be a fool.

Note:

Do is also used in commands or requests to make them more emphatic: Do come and stay with us. Do be quiet.

In commands and requests addressed to a first or third person (or persons) the analytical form let + infinitive without the particle to is used. The verb let functions as an auxiliary, and it partly loses its lexical mean­ing. The person addressed is expressed by the personal pronoun in the objective case.

Let us go together.

Let him finish his dinner first.

Let Andrew do it himself.

In negative sentences the analytical forms take the particle not without an auxiliary.

Let us not argue on the matter.

Let him not overestimate his chances.

Let her not go any further.

Note:

In sentences like Don’t let him go the negation refers to the verb let, which in this case fully retains its original meaning of permission.

The analytical forms differ in meaning from the synthetic forms, because their meaning is closely connected with the meaning of the pronoun included in the form. Thus let us do smth denotes an invitation to a joint action, not an order or a request. Let him do it retains to some extent the meaning of permission. In the form let me (let me do it) the first person singular does not convey any imperative meaning and should not therefore be regarded as the imperative. It conveys the meaning of I am eager to do it, allow me to do it.

The imperative mood form can’t be used in questions.

The subjunctive mood

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