Acceso usuarios
The Portuguese modal system use to be identified as composed by four categories - Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative and Conditional Mood. From this point of view may arise a lot of questions about the internal structure of such a modal system, the distribution of the semantic values, the specific instruments of the Imperative and Conditional Mood, etc. The paper attempts to explain the theoretical approach, analyzing the modal and the temporal categories according to the methods of the European functional linguistics. We try to establish the basic modal features, relying on the functional contrast between indicative and subjunctive morphemes. The indicative morphemes, as the extensive grammar elements, are more semantically relieved and, because of that, some of their forms, both Future tenses, could develop, throughout a temporal transposition processes, some additional modal values within the field of the epistemic modality. That way, having in mind both modal and temporal values, we try to represent a possible model of the Indicative Mood internal structure.
