| Indicative |
| Is the indicative the most realis mood? Assertions suggest
so. But, in English, adverbs are found with the indicative, modifying
speaker-commitment. And it is also used in conditional clauses, where
speaker commitment is suspended. |
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| Palmer and others suggest that the indicative is in fact
'epistemically neutral'. |
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| But he has to add the following rider: "it will generally
be assumed that the purpose of the presentation is that he [the speaker]
thinks it is relevant and probably true" (1986: 87). |
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| Better term: 'positive epistemic stance', as introduced
by Fillmore. This term can explain the use of the indicative in the
whole range of conditional clauses in Homeric Greek. |