irrealis [was Re: "Newbie"]

Jan van Steenbergen wrote:
>
> The imperative is usually treated as a mood. More difficult to place is the
> irrealis, which has something in common with both mood and time period.
According to Palmer in _Mood and Modality_, irrealis is 100% mood (and
Realis/Irrealis is the most fundamental modal distinction). It's just
that events in the future haven't happened yet, so they're by definition
notionally Irrealis--languages with realis/irrealis mood markings tend
to mark future verbs as irrealis for that reason--but Irrealis really
means a lack of assertion of reality, and isn't time reference. Or at
least that's my understanding.