Conditional mood


The conditional mood is a grammatical mood used in conditional sentences to express a proposition whose validity is dependent on some condition, possibly counterfactual.
It may refer to a distinct verb form that expresses the conditional set of circumstances proper in the dependent clause or protasis, or which expresses the hypothetical state of affairs or uncertain event contingent to it in the independent clause or apodosis, or both. Some languages distinguish more than one conditional mood; the East African language Hadza, for example, has a potential conditional expressing possibility, and a veridical conditional expressing certainty. Other languages do not have a conditional mood at all. In some informal contexts, such as language teaching, it may be called the "conditional tense".
Some languages have verb forms called "conditional" although their use is not exclusive to conditional expression. Examples are the English or French conditionals, which are morphologically futures-in-the-past, and of which each has thus been referred to as a "so-called conditional" in modern and contemporary linguistics. The English would construction may also be used for past habitual action.
This article describes the formation of the conditional forms of verbs in certain languages. For fuller details of the construction of conditional sentences, see Conditional sentence.

Germanic languages

English

does not have an inflective conditional mood, except in as much as the modal verbs could, might, should and would may in some contexts be regarded as conditional forms of can, may, shall and will respectively. What is called the English conditional mood is formed periphrastically using the modal verb would in combination with the bare infinitive of the following verb.
English has three types of conditional sentences, which may be described as factual, predictive, and counterfactual. As in many other languages, it is only the counterfactual type that causes the conditional mood to be used.
Conditionality may be expressed in several tense–aspect forms. These are the simple conditional, the conditional progressive, the conditional perfect, and conditional perfect progressive. For the uses of these, see Uses of English verb forms. The conditional simple and progressive may also be called the present conditional, while the perfect forms can be called past conditional.
For details of the formation of conditional clauses and sentences in English, see English conditional sentences.

German

In German, the following verbal constructions are sometimes referred to as conditional :
For more information, see German conjugation.

Dutch

The main conditional construction in Dutch involves the past tense of the verb zullen, the auxiliary of the future tenses, cognate with English shall.
The latter tense is sometimes replaced by the past perfect.

Romance languages

While Latin used the indicative and subjunctive in conditional sentences, most of the Romance languages developed a conditional paradigm. The evolution of these forms is a well-known example of grammaticalization, whereby a syntactically and semantically independent word becomes a bound morpheme with a highly reduced semantic function. The Romance conditional forms are derived from the Latin infinitive followed by a finite form of the verb. This verb originally meant "to have" in Classical Latin, but in Late Latin picked up a grammatical use as a temporal or modal auxiliary. The fixing of word order and the phonological reduction of the inflected forms of habēre eventually led to the fusion of the two elements into a single synthetic form.
In French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and Occitan, the conditional endings come from the imperfect of Latin. For example, in the first person singular:
LanguageExample
Late Latincantāre habēbam
Vulgar Latin*cantar-ea
Old Italiancantaría
Spanishcantaría
Portuguesecantaria
Catalancantaria
Occitancantariái
Old Frenchchantereie, -eve
Frenchje chanterais

A trace of the historical presence of two separate verbs can still be seen in the possibility of mesoclisis in conservative varieties of European Portuguese, where an object pronoun can appear between the verb stem and the conditional ending.

Italian

Old Italian had originally three different forms of conditional:
Only the tuscan form survives in modern Italian:
The second and third types have slowly disappeared remaining until XIX century in some poetic composition for metric needs.

Romanian

uses a periphrastic construction for the conditional, e.g. 1sg aș, 2sg ai, 3sg/pl ar, 1pl am, 2pl ați + cânta 'sing'. The modal clitic mixes forms of Latin habēre:
Old Romanian, on the other hand, used a periphrastic construction with the imperfect of vrea 'to want' + verb, e.g. vrea cânta 'I would sing', vreai cânta 'you would sing', etc. Until the 17th century, Old Romanian also preserved a synthetic conditional, e.g. cântare 'I would sing', cântarem 'we would sing', and darear 'he would give', retained from either the Latin future perfect or perfect subjunctive. Aromanian and Istro-Romanian have maintained the same synthetic conditional:
In Portuguese, the conditional is formed by the imperfect form of habēre affixed to the main verb's infinitive. However, in spoken language, the periphrastic form is also extremely common.
Grammatical personfalar comer rir
Eu Falaria/ Iria falar/ Ia falar Comeria/ Iria comer/ Ia comerRiria/ Iria rir/ Ia rir
TuFalarias/ Irias falar/ Ias falar Comerias/ Irias comer/ Ias comer Ririas/ Irias rir/ ias rir
Ele/ElaFalaria/ Iria falar/ Ia falarComeria/ Iria comer/ Ia comer Riria/ Iria rir/ Ia rir
NósFalaríamos/ Iríamos falar/ Íamos falarComeríamos/ Iríamos comer/ Íamos comerRiríamos / Iríamos rir/ Íamos rir
VósFalaríeis/ Iríeis falar/ Íeis falarComeríeis/ Iríeis comer/ Íeis comerRiríeis/ Iríeis rir/ Íeis rir
Eles/ElasFalariam/ Iriam falar/ Iam falarComeriam/ Iriam comer/ Iam comer Ririam/ Iriam rir/ Iam rir

Portuguese conditional is also called past future futuro do pretérito, as it describes both conjectures that would occur given a certain condition and actions that were to take place in the future, from a past perspective. When the conditional has the former purpose, it imperatively comes along with a conditional subordinate clause in the past subjunctive.
The Conditional is also one of the two Portuguese tenses which demand mesoclisis when proclisis is forbidden – since enclisis is always considered ungrammatical.
In Spanish the conditional is formed by the infinitive of the verb with a postfix -ía.., e.g. for all verbs. For irregular verbs, the stem is modified.
Grammatical personcomprar vender dormir tener Meaning
'compraríavenderíadormiríatendríaI would...
'compraríasvenderíasdormiríastendríasyou would...
'compraríavenderíadormiríatendríahe/she/You would...
'compraríamosvenderíamosdormiríamostendríamoswe would...
'compraríaisvenderíaisdormiríaistendríaisyou would...
'compraríanvenderíandormiríantendríanthey would...

Slavic languages

Russian

In Russian, the conditional mood is formed by the past tense of the verb with the particle бы by, which usually follows the verb. For example:
This form is sometimes also called the subjunctive mood. For more information on its usage, see Russian verbs.

Polish

forms the conditional mood in a similar way to Russian, using the particle by together with the past tense of the verb. This is an enclitic particle, which often attaches to the first stressed word in the clause, rather than following the verb. It also takes the personal endings which usually attach to the past tense. For example:
The clitic can move after conjunctions, e.g.:
Note that the clitic can not form a single verb with certain conjunctions, nor start the subordinate clause, as it would change the meaning to the subjunctive, e.g.
There is also a past conditional, which also includes the past tense of the copular verb być, as in byłbym śpiewał, but this is rarely used.
For details see Polish verbs.

Uralic languages

Hungarian

Hungarian uses a marker for expressing the conditional mood. This marker has four forms: -na, -ne, -ná and -né. In the present tense, the marker appears right after the verb stem and just before the affix of the verbal person. For example: I would sit: ül + ne + k = ülnék. When making an if-sentence, the conditional mood is used in both apodosis and the protasis:
In Hungarian, the past tense is expressed with a marker as well, but two verbal markers are never used in sequence. Therefore, the auxiliary verb volna is used for expressing the conditional mood in the past. The word volna is the conditional form of the verb van . The marker of past is -t/-tt, and is put exactly the same place as the marker of conditional mood in the present.
Expressing a future action with the conditional mood is exactly the same as the present, although an additional word referring to either a definite or indefinite time in the future is often used: majd ', holnap ', etc.
The conditional mood is often used with potential suffixes attached to the verb stem ', and the two are therefore often confused.
In Finnish the conditional mood is used in both the apodosis and the protasis, just like in Hungarian. It uses the conditional marker -isi-: