Asymmetry of Approaches to Investigating the Subjunctive Mood in the English and Arabic Languages
The subjunctive mood belongs to the paradigm of one of the most important linguistic categories - the category of mood. Mood is based on a person's attitude to reality, i.e., this category manifests itself as modality. Mood in many languages is a complex phenomenon with a multicomponent structure which is made up of semantic and grammatical aspects. However, in different languages, depending on the structure, different aspects come to the fore when studying the subjunctive. So, if we talk about Indo-European languages, in particular, English, the subjunctive mood manifests itself in them as a semantic-grammatical category. In languages with a different grammatical structure, such as Arabic, the category of subjunctive appears primarily as a morphological one. Consequently, approaches to the study of the category of subjunctive in English and Arabic are asymmetric. As a result of applying the functional-semantic approach to the study of subjunctive in English, linguistic means of different levels are determined: morphological, lexical, partially syntactic. The formal approach to the subjunctiveness of the Arabic language most accurately reflects the linguistic status of the subjunctive mood, making it possible to single out grammatical means and individual constructions with the seme of the subjunctive, thus illustrating the unique status of the subjunctive in the compared languages. As a result of the study using the functional-semantic approach in the English language, the main types of subjunctiveness are considered: subjunctiveness that does not contradict reality, subjunctiveness that contradicts reality, hypothetic and conditional subjunctiveness. At the same time, the category of subjunctive in English is represented both grammatically and by units of the lexical level. In Arabic, in view of its developed morphologized specificity, it is logical to use a formal approach when considering the category of subjunctive. The subjunctive in Arabic is a category which, first of all, is morphological. Grammar-semantic features of subjunctiveness are inherent in conditional sentences of real and unreal types. Unreal action is also common in the studied languages, which can be interpreted as “I wish I would” or “I wish I would not”.