Sobre el modo y los modos

The aim of this paper is to present the grammatical status of the category of Mood, to compare the features of this verbal category with the characteristics of the Tense and also to examine the role that the moods play in the transmission of the renarrated or cited contents. The author presents the definitions of the Mood of the Spanish grammars and discusses the problems connected with the grammatical status of this category, first of all the relation with the notion of modality (deontic and epistemic dimensions) and with formal criterion of flexion classes. To the mind of the author, the Mood, unlike the Tense, is a more complicated and syncretic category with morphological, semantic, syntactic, pragmatic, informative and textual parameters. The question of the linguistic status of the Mood is still more complicated because, apart from the contents traditionally attributed to this category (assertion, contrafactuality, subjectivity, etc.), the moods transmit the contents connected with the textual anaphora (quotations, evocations). In Spanish the textual anaphora is expressed by some indicative tenses or by the subjunctive mood. The use of this mood is not obligatory in such instances, although it occurs with considerable regularity and the subjunctive marks first of all shared or irrelevant information.