moodsindicative

Moodsindicative, commonly referred to as the indicative mood, is a grammatical mood used to express factual statements about real-world entities and events. It is the default mood in many languages and contrasts with non-factual or non-real moods such as the subjunctive, conditional, or imperative.

In most languages, the indicative marks reality and is used for statements about past, present, or future events that the speaker regards as true or probable. It can encode tense, aspect, and sometimes mood within a single system, and its forms are typically the most frequent in everyday speech and prose.

Morphology and usage vary across languages. In English, the indicative operates with distinct present and past forms and uses auxiliary verbs to express future or perfective aspect (for example, I walk vs. I walked; They will arrive). Some languages have rich verbal inflection where mood, tense, and aspect are bundled into a single form, while others rely on periphrastic constructions.

Examples include: The cat sits on the mat. (present indicative) They went to the store yesterday. (past indicative) Tomorrow, we discuss the report. (future intent expressed with a finite verb form)

Relationship to other moods: the indicative is generally the baseline mood for statements of fact. The subjunctive or irrealis moods express non-factual possibilities or hypothetical situations, while the imperative conveys commands.