indicative mood
- noun
- /ˈɪndɪkətɪv muːd/
- Specialized
:
modo indicativo
- The indicative mood is commonly used to express facts, such as stating that the sky is blue.
Examples
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In German, the subjunctive form for the auxiliary verb "mag" is used much more than the indicative mood—as far as I know.
Blog text (31) -
In English grammar, the indicative mood allows us to convey statements like, 'He plays football every weekend.'
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When asking a question, such as 'Are you coming to the party?', the indicative mood is used.
Synonyms
1
5.5
The verb mood used to state facts and ask questions
Antonyms
- Specialized
1
8.8
A verb form used to show wishes, suggestions, demands or unreal situations
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is fully compositional: 'indicative' describes a type of grammatical marking (indicating/declarative) and 'mood' names the grammatical category, so together they denote the grammatical mood that indicates statements or questions. This construction is cross-linguistically common (e.g. Spanish indicativo, French indicatif), so a learner who knows the constituent words and basic grammar will readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Indicative mood comes from the idea of 'indicate', which means to point to or show something. So imagine someone pointing at a real thing; that's why the indicative mood is used when we 'say' or 'ask' about 'facts'.