irrealis moods

Whyndell Grizzard

This is a linguistic term "irrealis" but have not found it in any of the Grk grammars, etc. The only place I found that references it with any degree of depth was Wikipedia, and really do not use them as a reliable source.

Does anyone know if it is quoted or referenced by any authors other than articles in Notes on Linguistics produced by SIL.

NB.Mick

This is a linguistic term "irrealis" but have not found it in any of the Grk grammars, etc. The only place I found that references it with any degree of depth was Wikipedia, and really do not use them as a reliable source.

Does anyone know if it is quoted or referenced by any authors other than articles in Notes on Linguistics produced by SIL.

The first hit coming up in my library is from Runge's "Greek Verb revisited", the book uses that expression about 20 times

2.3 Introduction to Mood

The category of mood is a little more complicated than tense and aspect. As our concern here is primarily on the distinction between tense/aspect, note a few illustrative examples. In English, mood is expressed through auxiliary or helping verbs. Consider example 3:

a. Actuality: He landed at Heathrow rather late.
b. Probability: She might arrive home by dinner if traffic is good.
c. Permission: You may substitute asparagus for the baked potato.
d. Ability: He can type 50 words per minute.

English modal auxiliary verbs can also express functions such as possibility, necessity, and obligation. For our current purposes, note that mood functions in a language to express a range of expressions, from describing a factual event (so-called realis), to describing something that is extrafactual (so-called irrealis). This irrealis category can express a possibility (e.g., “might,” “could”) or obligation (e.g., “should,” “must”). Greek has four moods: indicative (a realis mood used for statements/questions), the irrealis imperative (used for commands), subjunctive, and optative moods (expressing probability and possibility, respectively).

FWIW, I think that many authors might refrain from using the Latin-based technical term "irrealis" and may speak about something "unreal" (e.g. Siebenthal, the author of my German-language Greek Grammar uses "Irrealis" and links his chapter to sections 313-129 of Zerwick's Grammar, where the term does not appear - in fact, only in one footnote in section 311 citing Blass-Debrunner's German edition, which did not make it in to the English translation! - see that Zerwick uses "unreal" in quotation marks to indicate it's a technical term: