Modality and mood

This chapter surveys modal and mood systems characteristic of Australian languages. It examines the formal make-up of the inflectional modal systems of different (genetically and geographically distinct) languages and language families, as well as considering how modal force and flavour is specified in these languages. While Australian languages show much diversity in their modal systems, we can observe a fairly general formal distinction in inflectional modal marking between i) those (mainly non-Pama-Nyungan) languages in which TAM expression involves the unification of two dislocated exponents of the verbal template, and ii) those (mainly Pama-Nyungan) languages in which inflectional modal marking is largely isolated to suffixal verbal marking. We can make some broad generalisations about how modal force and flavour are specified in these languages, however it is clear that Australian languages show much variation with respect to these modal parameters.