Tensemood

Tensemood is a theoretical grammatical category that combines information about tense and mood into a single morphosyntactic value. It is discussed in linguistic typology and in the design of constructed languages as an alternative to treating tense and mood as separate systems. In a tensemood framework, each verb form bears a value that encodes both when the event occurs and the speaker’s attitude toward it.

The combined value may be realized as an affix, clitic, or independent particle and can specify a range of combinations, such as past-real, present-irrealis, or future-imperative. The category is typically described as a multi-valued feature whose values pair temporal reference with mood or modality. Depending on the language, tensemood can influence or interact with aspect, agreement, and evidentiality.

Natural language evidence for a true, single tensemood marker is limited; many languages show close coupling of tense and mood, or separate but interacting systems. Tensemood is therefore mainly a theoretical construct and is sometimes used in conlang design to achieve a compact verbal morphology or to illustrate typological possibilities.

In practice, a tensemood system would attach a single marker to a verb to encode the combined time and attitude. A hypothetical example might encode past and realis as one value and present and irrealis as another; the exact inventory and realization depend on the language’s design.

See also: Tense, Mood, Evidentiality, Linguistic typology, Conlang.