New analysis of mood in language could revolutionize communication understanding.
Davidson's paratactic analysis of mood suggests that sentences in non-indicative moods should be seen as two separate utterances: one stating the indicative sentence and another stating the moodsetter. The moodsetter for an imperative sentence, for example, is like saying "That utterance is a command". However, this approach has some issues. It makes it very complicated to figure out the meaning of a sentence, and it weakens the link between mood and the intended meaning or force of the sentence.