Modal MD: VerbForm=Fin without Mood

Gist. According to Mood.md, mood is a feature of finite forms, and according to VerbForm.md, modal MD are finite. EWT gives modals only VerbForm=Fin, without Mood. The validator issues a verbform-fin-without-mood warning for each such token. What to do is being discussed in #1118 (open, 45 comments).

Guideline.

2.18:docs/_en/feat/Mood.md:8: «Mood is a feature of finite verbs»;
2.18:docs/_en/feat/VerbForm.md:12: «Rule of thumb: if it has non-empty Mood, it is finite. … modals with the PTB tag MD have this feature»;
the en FEATS registry allows only Mood=Imp|Ind|Sub. In the auxiliary registry (tools/data/data.json) the function of modals is recorded as mood: can, could, may, might, dare — Mood=Pot; must, should, ought, need — Mood=Nec; would — Mood=Cnd; will — Tense=Fut; shall — Mood=Nec,Tense=Fut (likewise in en/data/ud-registry-en.tsv, aux lines).

EWT 2.18 data. Counted by the engine (rule below). MD with VerbForm=Fin without Mood — 4049: VerbForm=Fin — 4026, another 23 with Typo, Abbr or Style=Arch. One MD has empty FEATS. In GUM (2956), GENTLE, PUD and LittlePrince modals are likewise without Mood.

Validator. tools/udtools/src/udtools/level3.py:110–113: if node.feats['VerbForm'] == 'Fin' and node.feats['Mood'] == '' → Warning verbform-fin-without-mood. The comment there refers to #1155 («complaints about this warning»). It is a warning, not an error, so it does not block the release.

Open question. #1118 (nschneid): should modals get Mood=Pot/Nec, as the universal Mood.md advises? What then about will: Mood=Irr or Tense=Fut? The author leans toward treating this as lexical meaning, not a paradigm cell. #1233 (Kahane) cites modals with VerbForm=Fin as an example of a "lexical" feature. No decision yet.

Sources. 2.18:docs/_en/feat/Mood.md, 2.18:docs/_en/feat/VerbForm.md; 2.18:tools/udtools/src/udtools/level3.py (unchanged in the snapshot); issues #1118, #1155, #1233.

rule: ud218.modal-no-mood
what: modal MD with VerbForm=Fin without Mood — Mood.md: every finite form has mood
match: m[xpos=MD, feats.VerbForm=Fin]
require: m[feats.Mood]
severity: warn
source: UD 2.18 docs/_en/feat/Mood.md:8; docs/_en/feat/VerbForm.md:12; tools level3.py verbform-fin-without-mood

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/dialects/ud-2.18/seeds/modal-mood/