Indicative Mood Definition: 6 Indicative Mood Examples

In grammar, the indicative mood is a verb form you use to make declarative statements that you assume to be factually accurate, such as when you ask a question in the form of a statement or state an opinion as if it were a fact. In Modern English grammar, indicative mood belongs to the grammatical mood group, along with imperative mood and subjunctive mood. A grammatical mood expresses how the speaker uses the main verb (one of the parts of speech) in a sentence to give meaning to the object of the sentence.

Indicative mood is the only “realis mood,” meaning it expresses something that is real or true—factual statements about the subject—therefore a sentence’s inclusion of an indicative mood verb is conditional based on whether the sentence contains statements of fact. You can use an indicative verb in any verb tense in either declarative sentence or interrogative sentence structures. Indicative mood is the most commonly used mood type in the English language.

There are three main mood forms in English grammar:

1. 1. Imperative mood: The imperative mood expresses commands. For example: “Kick the ball!”
2. 2. Indicative mood: The indicative mood states facts in the form of statements, opinions, or questions. For example: “You kicked the ball.”
3. 3. Subjunctive mood: A sentence with a subjunctive verb expresses a demand, wish, doubt, or imaginary situation. “You would kick the ball.”

In English, you use verbs in three tenses: present, past, and future. You modify those three tenses with the use of auxiliary verbs, which are words that enable you to adjust the tense even further, into “simple” or “perfect” forms of the present, past, or future tenses. Here are examples of indicative mood in all six tense variations:

• Simple past tense: "They moved." In this sentence, "moved" is an indicative mood verb in the simple past tense. There is no indicator of when, precisely, there was movement, but the tense indicates it happened in the past.
• Past perfect tense: “They had moved.” Past perfect tense expands on the simple past tense by adding a modifier that indicates one thing happened prior to the other action.
• Simple present tense: “They move.” In the example sentence, “move” is a verb in the simple present tense, indicative mood, communicating that the action is occurring presently.
• Present perfect tense: “They have moved.” A present perfect tense indicative mood verb expresses that the action began in the past.
• Simple future tense: “They will move.” In simple future tense, you indicate something to occur in the future.
• Future perfect tense: “They will have moved.” Future perfect, in comparison to simple future, expresses that an action will be completed at some point in the future.

English uses three primary grammatical moods—imperative, indicative, and subjunctive; but there are also “irrealis moods” that speakers use to describe something that is not real but should be, might be, or would be. There are numerous irrealis moods, some of which are formed with special syntaxes in English, or that appear in other languages and may or may not directly translate into English well. Three additional irrealis verb moods include:

1. 1. Hypothetical mood: The hypothetical mood is similar to the subjunctive mood in that they both describe what might be. Lakota (still spoken by some Sioux tribes) is an example of a language that uses this mood, whereas English must rely on syntax to communicate that something, while not true, easily could be or could have been.
2. 2. Inferential mood: An inferential mood revolves around events that the speaker did not experience but that they infer. Bulgarian and Turkish are two languages that use this mood. It’s often not possible to translate inferential mood to English.
3. 3. Interrogative mood: The interrogative mood expresses questions. The interrogative mood is not a primary mood in the English language; instead, forms interrogative sentences use special syntaxes, which might require the speaker to invert the order of the subject and the verb. Other languages, such as Welsh, have developed a unique inflection form of the verb to indicate the interrogative mood in a sentence.

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