ABSTRACT
Mood, as it is understood in this work, lies at the intersection of phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Mood is sentential form with a function. On the form side, sentences are described in terms of syntactic structure (including, occasionally, lexical items) and intonation. On the function side, sentences are described in terms of their literal and direct illocutionary force potential (pragmatics), and the notion of literality involves meaning (at least) what one’s sentence means (semantics). The study of mood (again, as here conceived) runs against the grain of much of contemporary linguistics, which is predominately concerned with stating generalizations at a given level (phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic). The generalizations we will be seeking relate these levels, and so will not look at all like traditional linguistic principles. What we are interested in finding are inferential principles relating these levels, principles that allow one to infer what someone might have meant (if speaking literally and directly) in uttering something of a given form.
