The mood system of Myanmar

1 Introduction

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the interpersonal metafunction represents the ways to enact our social relationships through language. The studies of mood^[1] systems and their realizations of certain languages such as French by Caffarel (2004), Chinese by Halliday and McDonald (2004), and Japanese by Teruya (2004) are based on Halliday’s (1985, 1994 Mood-Residue structure and Matthiessen’s (1995) phonological prosody (intonation) and grammatical prosodies (juncture and internal).

In the mood system of English proposed by Halliday (see Halliday 1985, 1994; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004, 2014), Mood^[2] structure is realized by the presence and ordering of Subject and Predicator. As the Hallidayan mood system does not put enough emphasis on semantics, Fawcett (2009) develops a semantic system network for mood in English. Fawcett (2009), however, does not provide a detailed account of the mood force system that measures the tension of the clause. Adapting Fawcett’s (2009) work, He et al. (2023) develop the mood network including the mood type and mood force systems. Different ways of exchanging information and goods-&-services in our social interactions are described by the mood type system, while the ways to achieve such exchanges are expressed by the mood force system. He et al. (2023) specify the features of the internal and external Mood force in their modified version of mood system. The former is an adaptation to Halliday’s (1985, 1994 modality^[3] system concerned with the speaker’s Modal^[4] commitments, while the latter expresses the speaker’s emotion through physical sound features of language such as degree and speed. The features of Mood force presented by He et al. (2023) are appliable to the semantic analysis of spoken Myanmar.

In view of previous studies of Mood and Modality in Myanmar which lack socio-semiotic concern, this study aims to fill the gap in the literature and presents the mood system of Myanmar from the Systemic Functional perspective based on He et al.’s (2023) new model of mood system, an appliable theory of investigating both function and form of Myanmar language.

In order to make the research findings more convincing and trustworthy, this study combines qualitative and quantitative research methods. By means of a qualitative research method, we explore the mood type and mood force systems of Myanmar based on the Mood analysis of different genres of Myanmar text, specifically literature, news articles, and SEAlang Library Burmese Corpus data. In the discussion section, we present the frequency of Mood types and Modality expressions used in the selected novel^[5] by means of a quantitative research method. The result throws light on the interpersonal communication patterns used by Myanmar speakers and forms part of a larger contrastive study of mood systems in Myanmar and foreign languages.

2 Previous studies of Myanmar Mood and Modality

The descriptions of mood system within the framework of SFL concern Indo-European languages (including French by Caffarel [2004]; German by Steiner and Teich [2004]) and non-Indo-European languages (including Japanese by Teruya [2004]; Chinese by Halliday and McDonald [2004]; Vietnamese by Thai [2004]). To date, there has been no description of the mood system of Myanmar from a Systemic Functional perspective in literature. To provide such a perspective, this section will present a relevant literature review of studies on Myanmar Mood and Modality.

The studies of Myanmar Mood mainly focus on Mood functions and emotions (Bridges 1915; Lonsdale 1899; Myint Soe 1999; Rattanapitak 2013). Bridges (1915: 31–32) investigates the functions of Mood particles indicating Myanmar indicative and imperative Mood. Myint Soe (1999: 130–135) explores the functions of declarative Mood and tense particles. These scholars have attempted to express Mood functions from a functional/semantic approach, yet they do not reach a communicative goal on the grounds that they could not provide a satisfactory explanation for the prominence and hierarchy of Mood in social context.

According to Lonsdale (1899: 156), Mood represents “the action or state expressed by the verb.” Based on emotions, Lonsdale (1899: 156–164) categorizes Myanmar Mood into indicative (including negative, interrogative, and honorific), imperative (including optative and precative), and subjunctive. Rattanapitak (2013) studies request strategies in Myanmar based on emotions. Following Blum-Kulka et al. (1989), Rattanapitak (2013) presents different syntactic structures of three kinds of requests in Myanmar: direct requests, conventional and non-conventional indirect requests. From a traditional approach, these studies focus on the rules of syntax, falling short of the social context of meaning-making in spoken Myanmar.

The studies of Myanmar Modality largely focus on the semantic notions of Modality expressions in Myanmar verb phrases from both formal and semantic points of view (Vittrant 2005; Vittrant and Van der Auwera 2010). Vittrant (2005) categorizes Myanmar Modality into three types: clausal or objective Modality, subjective Modality, and speech Modality based on different types of Modality proposed by Palmer (1986), Bybee et al. (1994), Payne (1997), De Haan (1997), and Bhat (1999). Clausal Modality is analogous to Bybee et al.’s (1994: 44) agent-oriented Modality and Palmer’s (1986: 102) non-subjective or dynamic Modality. This type of Modality concerns external constraints (i.e. encouraging an agent to perform the action expressed in the verb) or internal conditions (i.e. semantic notions such as obligation, necessity, ability, and desire). Subjective Modality concerning the relationship between the speaker and his or her utterance is further divided into three subtypes: epistemic Modality, evidentials, and appreciative Modality. Epistemic Modality indicates the degree of the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the proposition. Evidentials express the source of the information about the occurrence of an event, while appreciative Modality expresses the speaker’s feelings, evaluations, and judgments about the event reported by the proposition. Speech Modality concerning the interaction between the speaker and the addressee is categorized into two subcategories: sentence Modality (including assertion, interrogation, and injunction) and illocutionary acts. This type of Modality is analogous to Bybee et al.’s (1994) speaker-oriented Modality and Palmer’s (1986: 96–97) subcategories of deontic Modality: directive category and imperative. Vittrant’s (2005) description of Myanmar Modality is much more mechanistic than functional.

Vittrant and Van der Auwera (2010) explore Myanmar epistemic Modality expressing the degree of certainty about the truth of the proposition based on Van der Auwera and Plungian’s (1998) Modality types. Vittrant and Van der Auwera’s (2010) study is limited to the type of epistemic Modality in Myanmar. Bias in the data collection also exists because it relies on Myanmar translational equivalents of English Modal markers in the source text, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by Joanne K. Rowling and its Myanmar translated text by Kyi Kyi Ma (2003). These studies did not identify the function of Myanmar Mood and Modality expressions focusing on their prominence and hierarchy under contextual situations. They, therefore, could not offer a satisfactory explanation of communicative purpose of Mood. In literature, there has been no description of the mood system of Myanmar so far despite the proliferation of descriptions of mood systems in different languages such as English (Fawcett 2009; Halliday 1985, 1994; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004, 2014; He et al. 2023), Chinese (Halliday and McDonald 2004; He et al. 2023; Li 2007), Japanese (Geng 2021, 2022; Teruya 2004), and so on. Consequently, there is a pressing need for a semantic system network for mood in Myanmar. In order to meet this need, this article intends to adopt Halliday’s Systemic Functional approach to the description of the mood system of Myanmar in which the meaning is driven by the context.

From a Systemic Functional approach, “Mood is defined as the area of language in which choices are made to assign communicative roles to the performer and the addressee; such choices are modeled in terms of a system network” (Fawcett 2009: 4). In the field of SFL, Halliday (1985, 1994 describes a set of explicit realization rules pertaining to each Mood type by the presence and ordering of Subject and Predicator. Thus, Halliday’s (1985, 1994 system network for mood in English is at the level of form. Fawcett (2009) develops a semantic system network for mood in English at the level of meaning, believing that Mood is a part of the meaning potential of a language. Taking account of the Mood functions that all languages possess, He et al. (2023) reconstruct a mood system network which is appliable to the descriptions of all languages.

In the mood system developed by He et al. (2023), the two systems are incorporated into mood type and mood force, with the latter adapted from Halliday’s Modality. The former conveys two main areas of meaning. The first meaning concerns giving and demanding information construed by indicative Mood, while the second one concerns the proposal for action construed by imperative Mood. Indicative Mood has two options: declarative for giving information and interrogative for demanding information. Exclamative Mood, a sub-type of declarative, offers a choice between straight and pseudo-straight. If the exclamative clause is straight, it offers five options: at the thing, at the quality of the thing, at the quantity of the thing, at the quality of the situation, and at the quantity of the situation.

Interrogative Mood representing speakers’ request for information is further divided into three subtypes: the polarity seeker (asking for yes or no), new content seeker (asking for participants and circumstantial elements), and choice of content (seeking the choice between different options). Polarity seekers can be either biased or unbiased. Each of them is further divided into two types: positive and negative polarity for the former, and basic and choice of polarity for the latter.

In the system network for mood constructed by He et al. (2023), imperative Mood includes three major types: target, softener, and imperative type. Target is further divided into four types: speaker, addressee, both speaker and addressee, and third party. Softener contains two major types: politeness marker and minimizer. Imperative type is further divided into six categories: directive, request (including two subtypes: for service and for goods), ruling, hope, suggestion (including two subtypes: proposal and recommendation), and wish. According to He et al. (2023), declarative, interrogative, and imperative Mood types have six tagging systems: basic, confirmation seeking, opinion seeking, agreement seeking, content seeking, and willingness seeking. These tagging systems are all found in Myanmar. A schema of indicative and imperative Mood, and their sub-entries is demonstrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1:

A schema of indicative and imperative Mood, and their sub-entries (He et al. 2023).

The mood force system of Myanmar comprises two major types: internal and external. The internal mood force system representing the speaker’s Modal commitments is further divided into two types: default or non-default. Non-default form offers a choice between realis and irrealis. The former has two options: certainty and expectation (including two subtypes: expectedness and unexpectedness), while the latter offers a choice between modalization and modulation. Modalization expresses capability, necessity, and probability, while modulation expresses permission, inclination, and obligation. The external mood force system measures the speed of our utterances at three levels: fast, normal, and slow. It also measures the degree of force put on the clause through physical sound features to add to the tension of the clause. The degree of force is classified into three levels: high, middle, and low. These language features characterized by He et al. (2023) in their modified version of mood system make an important contribution to the semantic analysis of spoken text. Their framework has already been applied to the descriptions of mood systems of English (He et al. 2023), Chinese (He et al. 2023), and Japanese (Geng 2021, 2022), which proves to be workable in those languages. This article also applies He et al.’s (2023) framework illustrated in Figure 2 as its theoretical basis to test whether this framework is appliable or not to the description of the mood system of Myanmar.

Figure 2:

The mood system developed by He et al. (2023).

3 The mood system of Myanmar

Language functions to interact with other people and expresses opinions about states or events. The main purpose of using language is to exchange information and goods-&-services. Such exchange can convey the interpersonal meaning of the clause (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 106, 2014: 134). Mood and Modality are two main language systems that play an important role in realizing the interpersonal meaning in Halliday’s SFL. mood is a system through which the interpersonal meaning is realized by choices that assign communicative roles to the interactants within the interaction, while Modality expressions signal the speaker’s attitude towards his/her proposition or proposal (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 147, 2014: 177). Following He et al.’s (2023) framework which is dedicated to the function of all languages, this section presents the mood system of Myanmar from a functional standpoint.

The mood system of Myanmar contains two sub-systems: mood type and mood force. The former describes exchanges of information or goods-&-services, while the latter describes the tension of the clause. The mood type system of Myanmar contains two major types: indicative (exchanging information) and imperative (exchanging goods-&-services). Indicative contains declarative and interrogative. Exclamative, a sub-type of declarative, is categorized into five types: at the thing, at the quality of the thing, at the quantity of the thing, at the quality of the situation, and at the quantity of the situation based on Fawcett’s (2009) semanticization. Interrogative Mood is categorized into three types: the polarity seeker, new content seeker, and choice of content based on the language features of Myanmar. Imperative Mood is further divided into six sub-categories: directive, request, ruling, hope, suggestion, and the statement of wish. The following sections will provide a detailed account of the mood type and mood force systems of Myanmar.

4 Discussion

Having described the mood system of Myanmar, this section analyzes the selected novel within He et al.’s (2023) framework to prove that it is appliable to the description of the interpersonal meaning in Myanmar, and the results of this study are convincing.

Like other human languages, there are three principal Mood types in Myanmar: declarative, interrogative, and imperative. Declarative and interrogative Mood types are subsumed under the category of indicative Mood. The mood force system contains two major types: internal and external. The former is closely related to the speaker’s Modal commitments, while the latter to the degree of tension in the clause. Modal verbs in Myanmar express capability, necessity, and probability in modalization; and permission, inclination, and obligation in modulation. Most of them appear as Modal auxiliaries, Modal adverbs, or mental state predicates. Table 1 illustrates the frequency of Mood types found in the selected novel.

As indicated in Table 1, declarative Mood is the most frequently used type out of the three in the selected novel as it accounts for the largest proportion (i.e. 87% of the whole text). The frequencies of interrogative and imperative Mood types are not quite different, which account for 7 and 6% of the whole text respectively.

It is found from the Mood analysis of the selected novel that tag questions, such as makaunnbue:larr, hokelarr, and mahokelarr can be added to Myanmar declarative, interrogative, and imperative to seek confirmation, opinion, agreement, content, and willingness, as shown in Examples (45)–(49).

In Example (50), the speaker uses the clause-final Mood particle nor to seek confirmation from the addressee.

He et al. (2023) supplement previous descriptions of mood system of English put forward by Halliday (1985, 1994, Halliday and Matthiessen (2004, 2014), and Fawcett (2009) with the mood force system that contains two major types: internal and external. The former explores the speaker’s Modal commitments, while the latter measures emotional intensity by means of the physical sound features of language such as speed and degree. Table 2 illustrates Modality expressions functioning as Modal auxiliaries, Modal adverbs, or mental state predicates that are commonly found in Myanmar.

5 Conclusion

This study presented the mood system of Myanmar from the Systemic Functional perspective following the network developed by He et al. (2023). It found that the mood system of Myanmar is composed of mood type and mood force systems. The mood type system of Myanmar is divided into indicative and imperative. The former indicates the exchange of information, while the latter of goods-&-services. Indicative contains declarative for giving information and interrogative for seeking information. Exclamative, a sub-type of declarative, can be either straight or pseudo-straight. If the exclamative is straight, it contains five sub-categories: at thing, at the quality of thing, at the quantity of thing, at the quality of situation, and at the quantity of situation. There are three major types of interrogative in Myanmar: polarity seeking, new content seeking, and choice of content. Imperative in Myanmar contains three sub-systems: target, softener, and imperative type. The target of imperative can be speaker, addressee, both speaker and addressee, and third party. The two major types of softener: politeness marker and minimizer weaken the tone of the command in Myanmar. There are six sub-categories in Myanmar imperative type: directive, request, ruling, hope, suggestion, and wish.

The mood force system of Myanmar is composed of internal and external mood force embedded in the exchange. The internal mood force system of Myanmar is categorized into default and non-default types. Non-default type of internal mood force contains two sub-categories: realis and irrealis. The former represents certainty and expectation, while the latter is further classified into modalization and modulation. Modalization represents capability, necessity, and probability, while modulation indicates permission, inclination, and obligation. The external mood force system of Myanmar consists of two indicators of language force embedded in the exchange: degree and speed. The former is categorized into high, middle, and low levels, while the latter into fast, normal, and slow levels. These findings show the functional prominence of Myanmar reflected in the description of Mood functions and the realizations. They may contribute to a better understanding of the social interactional patterns of Myanmar.

The present work proves that He et al.’s (2023) framework can also be applied to the description of the mood system of Myanmar, which shows the commonness of Mood functions among different languages. This study has clear implications for further research on the contrastive study of mood systems between Myanmar and foreign languages.

Abbreviations

3pl

third person plural

1sg

first person singular

2sg

second person singular

3sg

third person singular

ablmark

ablative marker

acc

accusative

addconn

additive connective

affmark

affectionate marker

all

allative

ana

anaphoric

appel

appellative

assoc

associative

capamod

capability Modality

caus

causative

clf

classifier

cmpr

comparative

com

comitative

comp

complementizer

compa

compassion

conj

conjunction

conn

connective

cop

copula

dat

dative

decl.mpart

declarative Mood particle

det

determiner

dim

diminutive

du

dual

empmark

emphatic marker

eupmark

euphonic marker

excl

exclusive

exper

experiential

f

female

fut

future

gen

genitive

imp.mpart

imperative Mood particle

incl

inclusive

inf

infinitive

ins

instrumental

int.mpart

interrogative Mood particle

loc

locative

m

male

mod

modifier

necmark

necessity marker

neg

negative

negdecl.mpart

negative declarative Mood particle

nom

nominative

objmark

object marker

oblg

obligation

opt

optative

pfv

perfective

plmark

plural marker

polmark

polite marker

postdecl.mpart

positive declarative Mood particle

prog

progressive

prs

present

pst

past

purp

purposive

refl

reflexive

rel

relative

sbjmark

subject marker

sup

superlative